German housing aid organization

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During the time of National Socialism and beyond, makeshift living space for millions of bombed-out Germans was to be built by the German Housing Fund (DWH) under the direction of the Reich Housing Commissioner ( RWK) .

overview

The relief organization was established by Adolf Hitler's decree of September 9, 1943 in order to create "tolerable accommodation for those affected by air warfare " at the expense of the Reich , in particular by "setting up simple makeshift homes in settlement form" in "extensive self-help and community help by the population." the resistance of large parts of the National Socialist leadership, Robert Ley , who was also Reich Organizational Leader of the NSDAP , head of the German Labor Front and Reich Housing Commissioner, was entrusted with the implementation and the issuing of the necessary regulations and orders. In the DWH, existing measures for accommodating air war victims have been bundled and further developed.

Support for the expansion of attic storeys and existing gazebos in makeshift apartments, the securing of bomb-damaged houses by adding emergency roofs, and the construction of "makeshift accommodation for bomb victims", a two-storey standardized barrack building for 16 families based on a development by Ernst Neufert, continued . Its construction at the end of 1943 proved to be too material and labor-intensive, so that the BfB campaign was discontinued at the beginning of 1944 with fewer than 3,000 buildings constructed.

organization

Construction card front
Inner part construction card
Building card back side

From an organizational point of view, Ley largely relied on existing administrative structures for the DWH; The Gauleiter were responsible for the implementation in their function as district housing commissioners throughout the Reich . They delegated the implementation to the local mayor . The land for the construction of the makeshift homes should be made available free of charge, while the costs for the construction were taken over by the German Reich . For this purpose, the building owner received a building card from the mayor, which guaranteed the repayment of a total of 1,700 Reichsmarks after completion. If no building materials of their own (e.g. from rubble recycling) were available, then a partial delivery card belonging to the building card - if available - could be used to obtain contingents of building materials. This means proved to be ineffective as the war progressed, as the high-quality building materials still available were primarily used for armament purposes.

Makeshift homes were built in three different ways:

  1. In personal contribution by the future resident; the building owner received a “makeshift home primer” for the building map from the municipality , which represented building instructions.
  2. As a joint task of employees of an employer , following the instructions of construction specialists who are not fit for military service.
  3. As a larger settlement project on behalf of a company or a municipality , implemented by the construction aid of the Deutsche Arbeitsfront GmbH with the use of “ Eastern workers ” (i.e. forced laborers ). Here, industrially prefabricated makeshift home types were often used, which were built in assembly construction.

Makeshift home types

The makeshift home of the DWH, also known as the Reich unit type, was part of the “German Academy for Housing e. V. “(DAW), which was affiliated to the RWK as a research institute . Hitler had personally influenced size after he had been shown different types of makeshift homes in his military headquarters in East Prussia , the " Wolfsschanze ".

The basic dimensions of the makeshift home of the DWH were 4.10 m × 5.10 m; Depending on the material and construction method, slight deviations were permitted. The roof was mostly designed as a cantilevered monopitch roof in order to allow a rain-protected stay in front of the building. Water and wastewater connections were not provided; standardized cable sets should be available for power supply if necessary.

Inside, the makeshift home consisted of two rooms that were heated by a single oven. The oven also served as a stove. In the entrance area, which was designed as a vestibule, there was a 60 cm deep pit that was supposed to replace the refrigerator . If the resident could not equip the makeshift home with their own furniture, standardized furniture was available that came from the war requirements program set up by the furniture industry, which existed before 1943 and was slightly adapted to the needs of the DWH.

All materials that could be procured by the end of the war could be used as building material; Many building materials that played an important role in the reconstruction were developed within the framework of the DWH and used for the first time. Extensive tests with building materials were made by the companies involved; to be mentioned here are: wood concrete , clay concrete, use of blast furnace slag as a cement substitute , rubble surcharge for concrete structures, etc. a. In the regions with extensive clay deposits, those willing to build were trained in the technology of clay building .

Implementation of the DWH

In practice, the DWH never met the expectations that Ley had originally formulated. Only a fraction of the one million makeshift accommodation planned for 1944 was built; a total of around 300,000 residential units were built between autumn 1943 and summer 1946; How large the proportion of makeshift homes was cannot be determined with certainty.

The reasons for the extensive failure were the lack of building materials, the building measures that were largely carried out by laypeople, and the reluctance of the municipalities to provide suitable land. In addition, most of the able-bodied part of the population was either engaged in war or in the armaments industry. Due to this strain, only a few human resources were left to implement the DWH. Due to the lack of specialist knowledge on the part of private builders, the implementation usually took longer than estimated; the number of structural damage caused by the weather and technical defects were considerable.

Similar difficulties arose with the industrially prefabricated makeshift homes in assembly construction processes. The building materials here were often not sufficiently weather-resistant and the structures were not fully developed, so that the buildings were drafty and leaky in winter and when it rained.

But as diverse as the individual reasons for the failure were, overall it must be doubted that Hitler, with his decree or Ley with the implementation, was actually striving to improve the bombed-out German "Volksgenossen".

A uniform design of the makeshift homes could not be enforced. If double makeshift homes for larger families were still covered by a decree, then, contrary to the regulations, attics were expanded, basements built, the floor plans changed, the specified size exceeded, etc.

The DWH did not end with the German surrender , but insisted by order of the occupying powers until the summer of 1946; d. H. For building cards issued before the end of the war, the completion bonus could be settled up to this point in time.

Today's remains

The DWH has largely disappeared from the public's awareness today. There are only a few buildings that have been preserved in their original state, but a large number of residential buildings essentially go back to makeshift homes that were expanded later. These can often be found in the open countryside ( outside ), sometimes also in allotment gardens , a number of which in Germany arose from former temporary housing estates. As permitted in outdoor areas and allotments not normally houses and buildings were almost always subsequently expanded, sometimes result in litigation if the buildings grandfathering enjoy (the buildings were indeed, but built legally without permits) and whether this original to the residents is bound. In many places in the vicinity of Münster (for example in the field corridor of the city of Telgte) there are many individual makeshift homes and in Gera ( Untermhaus ) and Wilhelmshaven (Bahnzeile) temporary home settlements whose residents have expanded the buildings into complete residential buildings in recent decades. The origin can still be recognized from the location of the houses and the division of windows.

The housing aid agency was not only active in the cities but also in the countryside. Ten emergency apartments were to be built in Bokel (Cuxhaven district) because 220 people had to be accommodated in autumn 1944, who had lost their apartments in the bombing raids, primarily in Bremerhaven . Five were built.

In the area of ​​the small town of Telgte, around 250 makeshift homes were built between 1943 and 1945, largely not in the form of settlements initiated by organizations or authorities, but according to many individual plans by individual citizens, mostly better-off citizens who were bombed out in Münster.

It is difficult to distinguish which makeshift homes were built in the name of the DWH during the war and which buildings were built as makeshift homes in the immediate post-war period . These post-war buildings outnumbered them considerably; In Hamburg, for example, there are approx. 3,600 temporary homes according to the DWH for 1949, but approx. 45,000 temporary homes from the post-war period.

literature

  • Fred Kaspar: Makeshift homes for bombed out. Coping with everyday life in the "total war" - Münster's citizens move to the countryside , Imhof-Verlag Petersberg 2011 (Insights - Volume 1. Writings of the Small Community House Foundation), ISBN 978-3-86568-761-6 , (overview of the German Housing Fund extensive source research and examples of buildings that have survived to this day), available as PDF .
  • Ralf Lange : Hamburg reconstruction and new planning 1943–1963 . Koenigstein i. Ts. 1994 (Die Blauen Bücher), ISBN 3-7845-4610-2 (with detailed references)
  • Axel Dossmann, Jan Wenzel, Kai Wenzel: Temporary architecture. Barracks, pavilions, containers. b_books, Berlin 2006, ISBN 3-933557-66-6 .
  • Fred Kaspar: Makeshift homes everywhere. In: Fred Kaspar (Ed.): Behind the Wall - Small Town Houses on and on the City Wall (Insights - Writings of the Small Town House Foundation Volume 4), Petersberg 2016, pp. 156–165.
  • Ralf Klötzer: How to live permanently in the makeshift home. An example from Drensteinfurt: Natorp 4. In: Fred Kaspar 2016 (as above), pp. 166–175.
  • Emil Schoppmann: The makeshift home "Haus Gedigk" in Milte, Krs. Warendorf. In. Fred Kaspar 2016 (as above), pp. 176-187.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Leader's decree on the establishment of the German Housing Assistance Agency of September 9, 1943, RGBl. I p. 535
  2. ^ Decree of the Reich Housing Commissioner of September 22, 1943 - II No. 2141/19/43
  3. ↑ History and Stories of a Village , ed. by the community of Bokel, working group "Book: 900 Years of Bokel", p. 115 (available from the community of Bokel, Hauptstrasse 52, 27616 Bokel)