Architecture in the German Democratic Republic

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Typical architecture of the 1950s at the Frankfurter Tor in Berlin , socialist classicism by Hermann Henselmann (photo 2009)
The modernist socialist city: relaxed architecture on Prager Strasse in Dresden

Architecture in the German Democratic Republic describes building projects, architecture and urban planning in the German Democratic Republic .

The architecture in the area of ​​the GDR after 1945 was dominated by ideas of the modern age , which received little political support. Instead, the socialist classicism or confectioner style prevailed until 1955 , which shaped Soviet architecture under Josef Stalin . The architecture in the cities followed the model of the socialist city with wide main roads, city dominants and a central parade ground. In 1953 Nikita Khrushchev initiated austerity measures in the building industry, which ultimately led to the farewell to socialist classicism and the industrialization of building in the GDR as well as to the dominance of large-block construction , and later to prefabricated buildings .

Within the GDR, the preferred expansion of East Berlin into the capital caused rivalries with other cities and districts, which felt themselves to be clearly disadvantaged in the allocation of building materials as well as planning and personnel capacities. The central representative architecture in Berlin includes the Stalinallee (now Karl-Marx-Allee ) and Alexanderplatz including the Berlin TV tower and the university tower in Jena .

Eisenhüttenstadt was an important new town . Other cities were significantly enlarged, the population of Neubrandenburg increased six times between 1945 and 1990 and that of Schwedt and Hoyerswerda even increased ten times.

Phases

Karl-Marx-Allee in Berlin. In the tree-covered gaps in the center of the picture on the right are the arcade houses of the first construction phase.

The architecture in the GDR was by no means uniform over the almost 41 years of its existence. Styles and emphases were influenced by political and ideological circumstances, but also by economic constraints. However, the main focus was always on solving the housing problem.

Post-war and founding years

In the early days of the GDR, ideas of modernity predominated. The destruction of the cities offered the opportunity to turn avant-garde approaches, especially those of the Bauhaus , into reality. Before the founding of the GDR, Hans Scharoun drafted the collective plan for a new division and decentralization of the then undivided city of Berlin on behalf of the Allied Control Council . Residential cells , in the form of a relaxed garden city and surrounded by greenery, should contrast with the dark and narrow apartments in the working-class neighborhoods.

A well-known example is the beginning of the construction of the then Stalinallee in Berlin, today's Karl-Marx-Allee and Frankfurter Allee . The two arcade houses on Karl-Marx-Allee between Warschauer Straße and today's street of the Paris Commune by Ludmilla Herzenstein are typical examples of this phase. After the splendid Soviet confectioner style prevailed in the 1950s, trees were planted in front of the buildings, which they still almost completely cover today. The facade of the confectioner's building on the avenue was moved a few meters forward, so that the arcade houses are no longer perceived as part of the ensemble. The functionalist architecture and the idea of ​​the garden city - which were actually related to the early ideas of the “socialist city” - were, as in other branches of art, with the slogans of “formalism” and “formalism” that were widespread in the 1940s and 1950s the "petty-bourgeois ideology" fought. Buildings from the avant-garde phase of the first years of the GDR are rarely found today.

  • Functionalist architecture of the post-war period

  • 2nd block of flats in the Stalinallee unit

  • 2nd block of flats in the Stalinallee unit

  • Model bedroom for the two apartment blocks (1950)

  • Laubenganghaus on Stalinallee (now Karl-Marx-Allee)

Socialist classicism of the 1950s

Redevelopment of the Dresden Altmarkt on its west side (1954)
Ring development in Leipzig (1956)
Socialist classicism in Magdeburg

These ideas of a relaxed and restrained architecture did not find political approval and were increasingly abandoned as early as 1950. Representative buildings in a dense development should take their place. In the now emerging Socialist Classicism (also known as the “ confectioner's style ”), historical building forms were cited in a qualified manner in the sense of a “national tradition”. The elements and shapes actually used vary in the individual structures and depending on the location. Ornamentation and other decorative elements of the past combined with modern living comfort. The background was a cultural-political ideology throughout the Soviet sphere of influence in Europe, which provided for the processing of national elements in contemporary architecture.

In accordance with the cultural program of that time, the building was built in 1951 in accordance with the “ 16 principles of urban development ” in a “national cultural heritage” architectural style . In the GDR these were predominantly echoes of classicism . There were also regionally specific neo-variants of the baroque (e.g. in Dresden and Neubrandenburg ) or the brick Gothic ( Lange Straße (Rostock) ). The avant-garde and constructivist ideas from the Bauhaus, which Scharoun and others were still trying to implement in the GDR, had to take a back seat. Instead, they wanted to create elegant, classic business and residential areas for the entire population, and East Berlin's chief architect Hermann Henselmann coined the term “workers' palaces”.

During this time a number of settlements and quarters emerged. Well-known examples are Berlin's Stalinallee or completely rebuilt cities such as Eisenhüttenstadt . The reconstruction of the Dresden Altmarkt , begun in 1953, cites the Dresden Baroque . The baroque style elements can be recognized here, for example, by the curved window arches, which were built rectangular in Berlin's Stalinallee. In the same phase, individual reconstructions, such as the Dresden Kreuzkirche , which was inaugurated in 1955, began in the interests of the “national cultural heritage” .

The Grunaer Straße 7-41 in Dresden was the first example of residential buildings in the style of Stalinist architecture with echoes of the Dresden Baroque. In the years 1951 to 1955 Bernhard Klemm and Wolfgang Hänsch built a new housing estate in the style of socialist classicism on the area of ​​the Pirnaische Vorstadt . Value was placed on a "technically complex construction method". As part of the expansion of bismuth - uranium mining were 1,953 to 1,954 of Albert Patitz the large settlement Nürnbergerstraße in Dresden Südvorstadt built, with echoes of the Dresden neo-baroque such as the Homeland Security style .

Material shortages and type construction in the 1960s and 1970s

The western part of Berlin's Karl-Marx-Allee, with the television tower under construction in the background
WHH GT 18/21 on Berlin's Fischerinsel. The " maple leaf " in the foreground , a kind of multi-purpose hall, has been demolished today
Café Moscow (2017)

The splendid style of the 1950s created apartments whose living comfort represented an unprecedented high point, but this style era came to an end as early as 1955. On the one hand ideological but also on the other hand specific economic reasons are to be cited, the GDR could soon no longer afford this elaborate design. With the de-Stalinization in the Soviet Union, which gradually spread to the other states in the Soviet sphere of influence, representative neoclassicism also came under pressure. Above all, however, it was recognized that the elaborate buildings in this style would not allow large-scale residential construction, as millions of people still lived in only poorly repaired old apartments or under extremely poor living conditions.

As a result, a more industrialized residential construction was developed, the focus of which was on minimizing costs and thus enabling rapid and mass construction of apartments. Design issues took a back seat. In Berlin, this development can again be observed in the former Stalinallee, which in the current phase was already called Karl-Marx-Allee. To the west of Strausberger Platz there was now a section whose planning corresponded to the “socialist city”. Instead of the splendid neoclassical buildings in the spirit of the Schinkel School , the Allee-Front was now characterized by purely functional residential buildings in industrial construction. Flat pavilions were sporadically built between these buildings, in which cafés ( Café Moscow ) and other places of coexistence were housed. Behind the tall residential buildings, flatter buildings in small-panel construction were arranged, which were arranged in a garden city-like environment. The architecture that replaced socialist classicism was again oriented more towards the functionally oriented ideas of modern housing. This was often not a conscious design decision, but rather owed to the increasing material needs of the GDR from the 1960s onwards.

In this phase the type buildings that characterize the large estates and parts of the inner cities in the new federal states were developed. The type WBS 70 , the P2 , first built in 1961, and the high-rise building WHH GT 18/21 were particularly widespread . Thanks to prefabricated parts, these types enabled quick and extremely inexpensive construction. The average construction costs for an apartment in 1965 were 20,478 marks, while an apartment in the 1951/52 high-rise building on Weberwiese - the prototype for Stalinallee, which is now a listed building - still required over 90,000 marks in construction costs.

In the 1960s, the GDR Council of Ministers decided to accelerate the construction and redesign of important cities in the country. So-called “city dominants” should give historical city centers a new, “socialist” appearance and tower above all other buildings, especially the church towers. The Berlin television tower was supposed to become an “urban height dominant”, a city crown that towers above everything, especially St. Mary's Church, and proclaims the “victoriousness of socialism”. The state architect Hermann Henselmann was commissioned to design a round tower for Jena, which should be the symbol of binoculars. The building was to be used as the research center of the Carl Zeiss Jena combine . Between June and September 1970, the reinforced concrete core was built using the sliding formwork method. For cost reasons, the building could only be implemented in a reduced version of the original Henselmann design.

In addition, industrial complexes were built in Schkopau and Leuna in the early 1960s. Erik Neutsch processed everyday at the local construction sites to a novel, Trace of Stones (1964), one of the most successful book appearances in the GDR, the film Spur der Steine by Frank Beyer from 1965 was banned immediately after the theatrical release 1966th Heiner Müller's piece of cement from 1972 based on a model by Fyodor Wassiljewitsch Gladkow was an adaptation of the subject of construction in the area of ​​the GDR theater .

  • Industrial building

  • Apartment blocks in the Fritz-Heckert development area, Chemnitz

  • High-rise facade, Halle-Neustadt (1967)

  • Karl Marx Monument, Chemnitz

  • Apartment houses on Friedrichsgracht (1964–1968)

  • U-shaped block on United Nations Square (1968)

  • Kino International, 1964

  • Industrial architecture, Ilmenau (1972)

  • World clock and television tower, Berlin (1964–1969)

  • University skyscraper Jena (1972)

  • "Blechbüchse" department store in Leipzig (1968)

  • Department store in Cottbus, design: Klaus Frauendorf (1966–1968)

Individualization and postmodernism in the 1980s

After the massive building program using industrialized construction methods in the 1960s and 1970s, the housing problem was not yet solved, but construction went into a further phase in the 1980s. Now, despite the higher costs compared to the new building, extensive renovation of the old buildings has begun. In Berlin, for example, as part of the city's 750th anniversary, buildings around Kollwitzplatz were refurbished and in Husemannstr. a kind of “Museum Street” was set up to portray everyday life in Berlin in the working-class neighborhoods. There were two ways of doing things in the new building sector: The first was a departure from the monotonous type of construction in relaxed ensembles. Instead, cities were again built up more densely. Examples are the new or reconstructed Nikolaiviertel in Berlin, which was also created or reconstructed during the 750th anniversary celebrations , where historical architectural styles were modeled using panel construction. In addition to these industrial buildings, which differ significantly from the block construction of the 1960s and 1970s, there were also buildings in the same quarter, the facades of which were faithfully modeled on past centuries, apart from the interior, these are exact reconstructions at a partly different location compared to the Original.

Other examples can be found in the Baltic Sea cities of the GDR, where a mixture of the prefabricated building method and Hanseatic gabled town houses was created. Particularly noteworthy is Rostock , for example with the five-gable house on Universitätsplatz by Peter Baumbach , inspired by the brick Gothic , which was completed in 1986.

In addition, however, large-scale residential quarters were still being built, although the rigid facades have now been deviated from. For example, bomb holes in densely built-up Berlin-Mitte were closed in blocks with new buildings. Individual houses were also created that did not correspond to any of the previous building types. In Halle (Saale) and Erfurt , too, efforts were made to vary the panels in such a way that gaps could be closed or new replacement buildings could be built that would adapt to the historical urban structure.

The Hilton Dresden , formerly the Hotel “Dresdner Hof”, on the Neumarkt in Dresden is a striking example in Dresden's old town of the changed urban planning guidelines in the late phase of the GDR, East Postmodernism . In doing so, "they no longer [insisted] on [a] radical break with history, but [...] a mediation of" historical heritage "and a modified postmodernism [wanted]." The building complex reproduced the "old Münzgasse in historical breadth" here. The building represents a turning point in the inner-city building policy of the GDR.

“'Postmodernism' is z. Z. defined from the western perspective: 'Counter-movement to modernity, which is not characterized by strict functionality, but rather by' fiction 'and' narrative 'and gains this from a historicizing eclecticism. Instead of dogmatic rigor, popular imagery, stylistic pluralism, sometimes irony. ' (Quotation: Berlin Architektur. Architekturführer 2003) The postmodern trends in the GDR have so far hardly been explored. The previous perception of the declining postmodernism has focused too much on the reception of buildings in West Germany and Western Europe / USA. Post-modern building, on the other hand, in East Germany and Eastern Europe is hardly known in the West. But building in the 1980s was different in the east than in the west. The specific appearances of the 'reformed plate' (in Dresden on the former 'Platz der Einheit', behind the Rundkino or on Böhnisch Platz), the architecture that continues history in a special way (such as the hotel 'Bellevue' on the block house or the guest house extension in the Ekberg Castle Park ) are representative of a different kind of constructive examination of the mistakes and wrong turns of post-war modernism. "

  • GDR postmodernism

  • Five-gabled house on Rostock University Square , built in 1986

  • The Nikolaiviertel in Berlin

  • The Grand Hotel in Berlin-Mitte, built in 1987

  • Hotel Dresdner Hof (now Hilton) as an essential, urban space-forming building complex on Neumarkt / Münzgasse

  • The post-modern Dresdner Münzgasse became a popular mile in the old town

  • Bowling club in Leipzig by Winfried Sziegoleit , built in 1987

Preservation of monuments and renationalisation after 1980

Berlin Cathedral 1982 after reconstruction

When building the GDR, Walter Ulbricht demanded on the III. Party congress of the SED the departure from ("western", founded in the Bauhaus in Weimar) " formalism ". The architecture has to be national in form. This attitude, as well as Ulbricht's intensive personal influence, was reflected in the founding of a German building academy and magazines with the title "German Architecture" and a number of contradicting demolition and construction measures. Among these demolition measures, the demolition of the Leipzig University Church was particularly controversial and aroused strong protests by GDR standards. In the sense of taking up the “national heritage”, many new buildings were built in the 1950s with echoes of regional and national- specific classical or baroque forms .

A rediscovery of old craft techniques as well as the development of monument preservation skills took place later in the GDR than in Poland and the Federal Republic . A central object was the reconstruction of the Semperoper in Dresden, which was inaugurated again in 1985. Symbolic ruins such as the Dresden Frauenkirche or the monastery church in Berlin have been preserved as memorials after their destruction in the Second World War until the end of the GDR or to the present day. Other important historical buildings such as the Berlin Cathedral or the Old Town Hall in Leipzig were rebuilt after war damage. The churches in East Germany also received support from the West for construction work. In contrast to the various alterations in the West, in many places in the GDR the historical substance of the pre-war period had decayed but was still preserved in its original form. In the 1980s, the GDR government increasingly restored references to the historical past, for example on the Berlin Gendarmenmarkt , when the equestrian statue of Frederick the Great was re-erected in 1980 on Unter den Linden, as well as in Meißen , Weimar and Naumburg .

Homes

New farmhouses under construction (1949)
Weekend House (1953)
Single family home (1977)

In addition to residential construction, there was also a brisk building activity in the area of ​​private homes in the GDR. In 1972 a stock of 2.5 million homes was counted, although this number decreased by 1989.

Rationalization was also in the foreground when building a home. Even after the land reform in the Soviet occupation zone , a large number of " new farmhouses " were built in the following years , which were very similar in structure and appearance. They housed the farmers who were now provided with their own land and who had previously had to live in poor housing conditions as farm laborers, servants or city dwellers. The rational simplicity applied to these houses continued in home construction in the years that followed.

In general, however, it remains to be said that building your own home never achieved the importance of mass housing construction in the GDR. Even in the outskirts of the cities, own homes could be bought at relatively low prices, due to the poor supply of building materials of all kinds, fittings and manual services, many people shied away from building their own house. The allocation of the few building sites was controlled by the state. Most of the land was owned by the state; it was not until 1990, under the Modrow government of the GDR, that it was possible to purchase the land. The risk of getting into trouble with necessary repairs was very high. In addition, rents in the GDR were limited by law and often made up less than five percent of the family income.

Alternatively, allotment gardening developed much more strongly in the GDR than in the Federal Republic. Allotment gardens served both as a substitute for a lack of travel opportunities and as an important compensation for supply bottlenecks with fruit and vegetables. In this context, the keeping of small animals in East German allotment gardens was occasionally classified. The allotment garden system in the GDR was adapted to the specific economic and cultural conditions, which was expressed, for example, in a much more liberal allotment garden law than in the West, which led to some difficulties after the fall of the Wall - the majority of East German allotment gardeners still "violate" this today the Federal Allotment Garden Act . The parcels were also larger on average than in western Germany. Allotments could be for extremely low fees from government or private, z. B. ecclesiastical property can be leased. In addition to allotment garden colonies, weekend plots further away from the cities, which were based on the Russian counterpart of the dacha , were also common. One consequence was that the word “Datsche” is now mistakenly taken as a term used in everyday language for a GDR allotment garden with a bungalow. In addition to some individual bungalow buildings, typified bungalows made of prefabricated modules were widespread, which, in contrast to the small garden houses in the Federal Republic of Germany, also made it possible to live for a longer period of time with bathrooms, kitchens and several rooms. East German allotment garden colonies today are typically characterized by the bungalows "B14", "B19", "B26" etc., which were delivered as a kit and built by the allotment gardeners themselves.

  • Home construction

  • detached house

  • Homes 1972

  • House building in industrial construction 1976

  • Homes 1976

  • Housing estate, Freital 1979

  • Row house R4, Schwerin Lankow built in 1980

Sacred buildings

Johanniskirche in Rostock
New synagogue in Erfurt
Christ Church in Rostock

After the Second World War, several emergency churches were built in eastern Germany to replace churches destroyed during the war , including several of the type designed by Otto Bartning . Another early new building was the New Synagogue in Erfurt , which was built as a simple two-story plastered building in 1951/52 according to plans by Willy Nöckel . It remained the only synagogue built during the GDR era.

After these early buildings, however, there were only a few new sacred buildings up until the end of the 1970s, such as the Catholic Christ Church in Rostock, built by Ulrich Müther in 1971 . The buildings were often hardly recognizable as churches from the outside. In particular, in the new planned cities such as Eisenhüttenstadt and the later large new development areas, no church buildings were originally planned and built. In his so-called “Tower Speech” on the occasion of the naming of the newly built city as Stalinstadt, Walter Ulbricht spoke in 1953 of “bourgeois capitalist dumbing down institutions” and indicated that there was no room for churches in the socialist city: “We were asked if we will also build towers in this city. Yes. The building that represents the new people's power, the town hall, will of course have a beautiful tower. And a beautiful cultural building is planned in the city map, which will have an even more beautiful tower. But otherwise we don't really need any towers. ”These statements are not found in the written manuscript of the speech, but are proven in many cases by partially differing memories.

This only changed after 1976, when the state approved the construction of ten new churches in new building areas of the GDR as part of a building program for New Churches for New Cities . In contrast to earlier isolated new buildings, these should be “no clubhouses”. Albrecht Schönherr understood this request from the State Secretary for Church Affairs to mean that the new buildings should be clearly recognizable as churches and should be limited to the “purely religious”. The first of these new churches was inaugurated in Eisenhüttenstadt in 1981, others followed in Dresden - Prohlis , Jena - Lobeda , Leipzig - Grünau , Magdeburg -Nord, Berlin-Fennpfuhl , Greifswald- Schönwalde, Gotha -West, Karl-Marx-Stadt-Markersdorf , Schwerin - Big Dreesch . In the 1980s, a number of other sacred buildings were built. The new church buildings were largely financed by West German or (especially in the years after the war) other European churches. For this reason, building materials ( clinker brick , copper) could often be used in the new church buildings , which otherwise were hardly available in this quality in the GDR building industry.

In the 1980s, religious buildings of other denominations and religions, such as the Mormons, were also built. Other religions, such as Buddhism , were mainly practiced privately.

  • Sacred buildings

  • Reconstruction of the Johanniskirche in Magdeburg (1952)

  • Evangelical Church in Boitin-Resdorf (1953–1959)

  • Provost Church of St. Trinity in Leipzig (1982)

  • Catholic Church in Ilmenau (1983)

  • Catholic Church in Berlin (1984)

  • Mormon Community Center in Freiberg (1985)

  • Mormon Community Center in Dresden (1988)

See also: List of sacred buildings erected in the GDR

Representation of the GDR abroad

GDR-StäV, Bonn
StäV of the Federal Republic of Germany, Berlin

The permanent representation of the GDR in the west was a functional building erected in Bonn- Godesberg, which today houses the German Nutrition Society . Franz Ehrlich (1955–1958) was responsible for the construction of embassies and commercial agencies as the architect of the Ministry of Foreign Trade.

The building of the permanent representation of the Federal Republic of Germany was directly connected with the research of the architecture of the GDR. It had originally served the Academy of Sciences and in 1949 was given a studio padded by Hans Scharoun . On January 1, 1951, the German Building Academy was housed here and at times the editorial staff of the “German Architecture” magazine. In 1973 the Deutsche Bauakademie cleared the house, which was converted for the permanent representation.

Interior design

Interior design and home decor

In terms of living culture, differences between rural living and areas characterized by industrial settlements in the GDR were clearly evident.

Traditional companies such as Deutsche Werkstätten Hellerau were used in the GDR for large-scale industrial production of interior furnishings for hotels, universities and theaters. The original focus on individual equipment with high-quality interior fittings for individual objects only rarely came into play. As an exception which applies Meyer villa in Radebeul, a "rare example of an East German entrepreneurs Villa" and the home style of Albert Patitz designed.

In the wake of June 17, there was a 1953 traveling furniture exhibition and a consumer survey. The traveling exhibition presented living room, bedroom and children's room furniture made in the GDR at 25 selected locations and asked the population for the opinion of the design studies using a questionnaire. The Socialist furniture design drew on historical models, less on the Bauhaus Modernism. Innovative approaches like those at the Ulm University of Design in the West were also observed with considerable suspicion in the GDR.

Functional buildings

Large broadcasting hall in the Nalepastraße radio building, 1956

Franz Ehrlich's Funkhaus Nalepastraße in Berlin-Oberschöneweide is known to this day for its extraordinary acoustics and high-quality and simple interior design . From 1956 to 1990 the radio of the GDR was based here.

Franz Ehrlich was also from 1950 to 1952, as director of the United National Owned Enterprises Industrial Design, responsible for the planning and construction of numerous industrial buildings and plants. a. Shipyards in Wismar and Stralsund , the ironworks in Freital / Saxony and the Elbe power plant in Vockerode / Saxony-Anhalt and, in addition to the Nalepastraße radio station, also for the Berlin-Adlershof television center .

Establishments of the consumer cooperative Konsum and the HO (trade organization) were formative for everyday life .

Transmission towers for telecommunications were erected in many places in the GDR from the 1950s onwards. In contrast to telecommunications masts, A towers were block-like structures with a square floor plan. They served as directional radio towers and radio towers for the People's Police as well as for monitoring telephone lines. The surrounding area was mostly protected from unauthorized access as a restricted area .

  • Functional buildings and industrial architecture

  • Consumption in the countryside in 1960

  • Prefabricated kindergarten

  • Industrial architecture

  • Industrial architecture

  • professional school

  • Extended A-tower on the dead stone

  • Supply Center (1972)

Legacy and Legacy

The teacher's house as part of the Alexanderplatz ensemble and western Karl-Marx-Allee in Berlin
Dilapidation of the Palace of the Republic, 2004

The architecture of the GDR shapes many of the larger cities in the new federal states. This includes loosened up development in the war-torn inner cities and monotonous prefabricated housing estates on the outskirts. At the same time, the maintenance of the old housing stock in the inner cities was massively neglected. Gerhard Schürer concluded in October 1989 in a submission to the SED - Politburo : "Since 1970, more than 3 million homes rebuilt or reconstructed and therefore for 9 million people d. H. more than half of the population of the GDR, new quality living conditions created. As a result of the concentration of funds, the most urgent repair measures were not carried out at the same time, and in cities like Leipzig, and especially in medium-sized cities like Görlitz and the like. a. there are thousands of apartments that are no longer habitable. "

Only a few GDR buildings were placed under monument protection after reunification . Examples of this are the teacher's house with the adjoining congress hall in Berlin or confectionery-style ensembles. In most of the large estates in the new federal states, demolition programs are taking place today, in which entire sections are demolished or the number of floors is significantly reduced. The background is a massive emigration of residents, both to the increasingly renovated old town quarters and to other regions. Instead of leaving whole blocks that are only inhabited sporadically, an attempt is being made to preserve the urban character by deconstructing the actual needs with increased quality of life and a minimum population density.

The widespread demolition of style-defining buildings from the GDR era culminated in the hard-fought demolition of the Palace of the Republic in Berlin and the associated, planned reconstruction of the Berlin City Palace . In addition to new aesthetic demands, interests in use and political contexts, the reasons for this are the high land prices, especially in city centers, which collide with the large-scale and loose building style of GDR architecture. One such case was a large-scale shopping center in Berlin's Friedrichstrasse, which was almost completed in 1989 and which eventually had to give way to a narrower development. In the case of the central Marx-Engels Forum in Berlin, on the other hand, the popularity of the inner-city open space contributed to the preservation.

The ruins of the Frauenkirche (Dresden) only had a similar effect as long as the surrounding open space of the socialist city was present. The Frauenkirche would have largely lost its memorial character in today's dense urban development. Because of the diverging debris, there had already been statically questionable movements for the surrounding area.

The historical importance of the socialist city is and has been the subject of comparative research, especially in social geography . Compared to the original forms, there have now been massive interventions and an increasing urbanization . For example, Prager Strasse in Dresden was heavily rebuilt and the loose and spacious development concept at the time was discarded by adding additional buildings in the gaps. At Berlin's Alexanderplatz, the relaxed ensemble typical of the socialist city was considerably impaired by subsequent structural densification. The distinctive reference points such as the world clock and especially the television tower remained as symbols of East Berlin.

The former socialist town centers are still characterized by a higher proportion of (affordable) apartments. Attempts have also been made in the west to counteract an almost complete desettlement of the city, as in the eponymous area of ​​the City of London , but with little success in view of the massive economic interests in the attractive inner-city locations.

The legacy of the GDR's urban development policy also includes the fact that the historic old town centers, especially in medium-sized towns, have largely been preserved in their pre-war state because there was not enough money for large-scale urban redevelopment programs such as those carried out in West Germany. Many old town areas were completely neglected in 1990, but the substance was still there, so that they could be secured and preserved. A particularly well-known example of this is the Andreasviertel in Erfurt , about which there was already a heated argument in the last years of the GDR. A second destruction of historic inner cities after 1989, as postulated by Erwin Schleich in the case of Munich, among other things , was discussed in parts of the former GDR and prevented by an extensive protection at the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Quedlinburg .

  • Inner-city development

  • Downtown Wittenberg (1991)

  • Town houses in the old town of Güstrow (2008)

  • Demolition of inner-city buildings - here Frankfurt (Oder) - after 1990

Industrialization and standardization through prefabricated building

Number of newly built housing units per year

Between the years 1949 and 1989 various standardized construction methods were used in the construction of residential buildings. While hollow blocks were used in the construction phase in the 1950s, the increased use of concrete slabs began in the 1960s, which led to the general name of prefabricated construction . The standardized and industrialized large panel construction (prefabricated building) massively restricted architectural freedom.

Both the facades and the apartment floor plans were standardized. A typical example of this is the Q3A series . While these buildings still generally had furnace heating, central heating or district heating was integrated as standard in the building types from the 1970s . So the housing series WBS 70 or P2 .

A total of approx. 3 million residential units were built between 1949 and 1990, of which approx. 1.5 million were built in prefabricated buildings.

According to Christoph Hackelsberger , before 1972 the GDR was definitely a leader in building physics and in automated construction, especially in the theoretical fundamentals. In the practical implementation, there were inadequacies due to the lack of adequate insulation materials due to the general lack of foreign exchange, as well as specific, construction-chemical problems (sulfur content of the local lignite, composition of aggregates in northern Germany) in the production of concrete.

  • Plattenbau

  • Factory for the production of concrete parts

  • Delivery of concrete parts (1975)

  • Demolition of prefabricated buildings

  • Reconstruction of a prefabricated building in Ilmenau

Examples

The State Council Building, Berlin (1964)
Main Post Office Leipzig (1964)
Hotel "Panorama", Oberhof (2009)
Rundkino Dresden (1972)
Palace of the Republic (1977)
New Gewandhaus and University Tower, Leipzig (1981)
Panorama Museum in Bad Frankenhausen (2004)
Socialist classicism
Socialist city and development areas
Magistrals
Dominants (skyscrapers and towers)
Special buildings in the modern style
Others

Stylish architects

Hermann Henselmann (1949)
Kurt Liebknecht (right), President of the Deutsche Bauakademie (DBA) together with Edmund Collein (center), the Vice President of the Academy and Hermann Henselmann (left), the chief architect in East Berlin in May 1954 at the second public general assembly of the DBA
Graffunder (2nd from left) explains a model of the Palace of the Republic (1974)

Hermann Henselmann (1905–1995) is probably the most important architect in the GDR . Immediately after 1945 he was able to realize modern ideas . After these met political resistance, he worked on the design of the Stalinallee in the confectioner's style. From 1953 to 1959 he was chief architect of Berlin, from 1959 to 1964 chief architect of the Institute for Special Buildings and from 1967 to 1972 chief architect of the Institute for Urban Development and Architecture at the Bauakademie . In this function he also took up ideas from the modern age. Among other things, Henselmann designed a tower of signals as a template for the television tower (1958), the teacher's house (1961), Leninplatz in Berlin (1968), the university tower in Leipzig (1968) and the university tower in Jena (1972).

Special mention should be made of the engineer-architect Ulrich Müther , whose shell structures, such as the Teepott completed in 1968 (with Erich Kaufmann and Hans Fleischhauer) in Warnemünde are remarkable individual structures. Mueller's buildings were also built abroad. So he built u. a. a mosque in Jordan and Zeiss planetariums in Kuwait, Tripoli and Helsinki. In Wolfsburg he designed and built the dome of the Zeiss planetarium from 1981 to 1983, for which Volkswagen AG delivered 10,000 VW Golf cars to the GDR.

Architects and urban planners
  • Concrete shell structures by Ulrich Müther

  • Hypar shell Magdeburg under construction in 1969

  • The Teepott in Warnemünde (1967–1968)

  • Rescue station in Binz (1968)

  • Wolfsburg Planetarium (1981–1983)

  • Zeiss Planetarium Berlin

  • Bandstand Sassnitz (1987)

  • Exhibition hall in Rostock-Schutow

See also

literature

  • Georg Chr. Bertsch, Ernst Hedler, Matthias Dietz : Beautiful uniform design. SED. = Stunning eastern design. Taschen-Verlag, Cologne 1990, ISBN 3-8228-0403-7 . (Text in German, English and French)
  • Werner Durth , Jörn Düwel , Niels Gutschow : Architecture and urban planning of the GDR. 2 volumes (1: Ostkreuz. People, plans, perspectives ; 2: Structure. Cities, topics, documents ). Campus, Frankfurt am Main et al. 1998, ISBN 3-593-35933-2 .
  • Hans Engels and Frank Peter Jäger: GDR architecture. Prestel, Munich 2019, ISBN 978-3-7913-8534-1 .
  • Birk Engmann: Building for Eternity. Monumental architecture of the twentieth century and urban planning in Leipzig in the fifties. Sax-Verlag, Beucha 2006, ISBN 3-934544-81-9 .
  • Bruno Flierl : Built GDR. About town planners, architects and power. Critical Reflections 1990–1997 . Verlag für Bauwesen, Berlin 1998, ISBN 3-345-00655-3 .
  • Christoph Hackelsberger : Concrete: Philosopher's Stone? Thinking about a building material (= Bauwelt Foundations 79). Vieweg, Braunschweig et al. 1988, ISBN 3-528-08779-X .
  • Volker Helas : Monument topography Federal Republic of Germany. Monuments in Saxony. City of Radebeul . Sax-Verlag, Beucha 2007, ISBN 978-3-86729-004-3 .
  • Sandra Keltsch: Urban renewal and urban monument preservation in the GDR between 1970 and 1990. Depicted on the development of historic cities in Saxony-Anhalt . Dissertation . TU Leipzig, Leipzig 2010. (digitized version)
  • Alexander Karrasch: Thinking about the 'national building tradition'. Architectural ideology and socialist realism in the GDR in the 1950s (ZOOM. Perspektiven der Moderne, 2, edited by Christoph Wagner ), Gebr. Mann Verlag, Berlin: 2014, ISBN 978-3-7861-2718-5 .
  • Andreas Ludwig (Ed.): Consumption. Consumer cooperatives in the GDR. Published by the Documentation Center for Everyday Culture of the GDR. Böhlau, Cologne et al. 2006, ISBN 3-412-09406-4 .
  • Margarete Meggle: Between the old building and the slab: Experience stories from living. Everyday construction in the late GDR era, using the example of the small Saxon town of Reichenbach in Vogtland. Dissertation, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, 2004 ( PDF; 7.5 MB ).
  • Toni Salomon:  Building after Stalin: Architecture and urban development in the GDR in the process of de-Stalinization 1954–1960 , Hans Schiller, Tübingen / Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-89930-065-9
  • Andreas Schätzke: Between Bauhaus and Stalinallee. Architecture discussion in Eastern Germany 1945–1955 (= Bauwelt-Fundamente , Volume 95). Vieweg, Braunschweig et al. 1991, 2nd edition, Birkhäuser, Basel 2016, ISBN 978-3-0356-1120-5 .
  • Erwin Schleich , Eva Dietrich (illustrator): The second destruction of Munich (= new series of publications of the Munich City Archives. 100). 2nd Edition. Steinkopf, Stuttgart 1981, ISBN 3-7984-0530-1 .
  • Oskar Schwarzer: Socialist Centrally Planned Economy in the Soviet Zone, GDR. Results of a regulatory experiment (1945–1989) (= quarterly journal for social and economic history. Supplements No. 143). Steiner, Stuttgart 1999, ISBN 3-515-07379-5 , p. 190. (Google Books)
  • Frieder Sieber, Hans Fritsche: Building in the GDR. Huss-Medien, Berlin 2006, ISBN 3-345-00892-0 .
  • Florian Urban: The Invention of the Historic City. Building the Past in East Berlin (1970–1990). Berlin 2006. (Berlin, Techn. Univ., Diss., 2006)
  • Christoph Wagner (Ed.): Cinemas. From Babylon Berlin to La Rampa Havana. Photography by Margarete Freudenstadt , Hirmer Verlag, Munich 2019, ISBN 978-3-7774-3458-2 .
  • Tobias Zervosen: Architects in the GDR. Reality and self-image of a profession. Transcript, Bielefeld 2016, ISBN 978-3-8376-3390-0 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Gilbert Lupfer, Bernhard Sterra, Martin Wörner (eds.): Architectural guide Dresden. Dietrich Reimer Verlag, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-496-01179-3 . Object no. 78
  2. ↑ Steffen Dobbert, David Hugendick: Das neue Leben der Stalinallee , Die Zeit , September 2013
  3. ↑ It should be noted that the apartments on Weberwiese were significantly larger than the average apartment in 1965. In spite of this, significant savings were also achieved in terms of costs per m².
  4. ↑ Lothar Heinke : Lonely tip: Berlin's most beautiful vantage point turns 40 . In: Der Tagesspiegel . September 27, 2009, p. 13.
  5. ↑ Schwerin / Rostock: Monument protection for the plate? Dispute over the preservation of the eastern structures , Ostsee-Zeitung , February 12, 2018
  6. ↑ Kirsten Angermann, Tabea Hilse: Altstadtplatten. 'Complex reconstruction' in the inner cities of Erfurt and Halle. Research on the architectural heritage of the GDR . tape 2 . Bauhaus-Universitätsverlag Weimar, Weimar 2014, ISBN 978-3-95773-010-7 .
  7. ↑ a b c Hotel Hilton Dresden - Postmodern.
  8. ↑ Florian Urban: Berlin / GDR, neo-historical. Precast story. Mann, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-7861-2544-0 .
  9. ^ Hotel "Dresdner Hof" (now Hilton). GDR postmodernism and reconstruction of the historic Dresden city center. Retrieved August 26, 2013 .
  10. ↑ Schwarzer , p. 190.
  11. ↑ Heinz Bräuer: The first three decades of the Evangelical Peace Church Community Eisenhüttenstadt - memories. Privatdruck, Eisenhüttenstadt 1991, p. 53 ( PDF, 20 MB ( memento from July 19, 2011 in the Internet Archive )).
  12. ↑ The speech is archived in the radio archive of the rbb (D026648)
  13. ^ Exhibition in the German Historical Museum Berlin, Zeughaus, May 16 to August 12, 1997 Gottfried Korff coordinate systems. On the political symbolism of places and orders in two new cities
  14. ↑ 10 years of the community center Am Fennpfuhl. Berlin 1994.
  15. ↑ Margarete Meggle
  16. ↑ Helas , pp. 68-69.
  17. ↑ Bertsch
  18. ↑ Documentation Center Everyday Culture
  19. ↑ Gerhard Schürer, Gerhard Beil, Alexander Schalck, Ernst Höfner, Arno Donda: Analysis of the economic situation of the GDR with conclusions. Submission for the Politburo of the Central Committee of the SED, October 30, 1989. (online)
  20. ↑ Sneak
  21. ↑ Sieber
  22. ↑ Hackelsberger
  23. ^ Jan Lubitz: Architect portrait, Hermann Henselmann