DEWOG movement

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The DEWOG movement describes the free trade union-cooperative housing welfare in the Weimar Republic. It formed a network of real estate companies active across the empire for the non-profit construction of small apartments.

founding

On March 14, 1924, the German housing welfare company DEWOG for civil servants, employees and workers was founded under the leadership of the former Schöneberg city building council and architect Martin Wagner as an employee housing welfare company in the trade union-cooperative association for the area of ​​the German Empire of the Weimar Republic . For the first few months it was initially called the Revisionsverband REWOG , Reichswohnungsfürsorge AG for civil servants, employees and workers. The general German trade union federation ADGB , the general free employee trade union federation AfA-Bund and the general German civil servants federation ADB , the workers' bank and the association of social construction companies (VsB, initiated and founded in 1920 by Martin Wagner together with August Ellinger) were the shareholders . as an organization of the Bauhütten movement. The Volksfürsorge -Versicherung and other individual unions appeared that composite added later.

history

Prehistory of the DEWOG-Verbund - Bauhütten and the Association of Social Construction Companies VsB

Martin Wagner had already planned and managed the construction of the small-scale housing development project “Lindenhof” from 1918 (first symbolic groundbreaking in December), well before the relevant incorporations as a result of the Greater Berlin Act 1920, as a city planning officer. Today it operates as the GeWoSüd eG cooperative, www.gewosued.net. In a green, park-like residential complex around a pond, 127 four-family and 75 single-family houses in row houses were built for factory workers' families on access roads, which should meet the demands on the architecture of creating decent living space with light, air and greenery. The Lindenhof ensemble, which was still inspired by the garden city, was supplemented by the planning architect, Bruno Taut (1880–1938), with the central single home and the premises of the community in the corner of Schöneberger Eythstrasse and Domnauer Strasse.

On April 26, 1919, Wagner gave his lecture on "The Socialization of Construction Companies" to the Socialization Commission. August Ellinger, board member of the German Construction Workers ' Association, then submitted an application for the socialization of the building and housing sector on its first day on May 6, 1919. On October 18, 1919, the first Bauhütte - Sozial Baugesellschaft mbH Berlin was founded. At the second day of the German Construction Workers' Association on May 12, 1920, the latter decided to provide financial and organizational support for socialized construction companies. The establishment of such an association of social construction companies VsB, for the organizational consolidation of already existing building huts and building contract cooperatives, took place on September 16, 1920. Martin Wagner was also the first managing director of the VsB, but entered into disputes in the conflict between company co-determination committees and coveted extended decision-making bodies - and the authority of the VsB management to give instructions soon. In April 1922, the trade union federations finally appointed August Ellinger to succeed him as full-time VsB managing director, who held this position until the National Socialists came to power. At the Leipzig Association Day of the German Building Trade Association in 1922, it was decided that five percent of the ordinary income from local and district membership fees accruing to the federal treasury should be used for the socialization of the building industry . The VsB members were also recommended to support the VsB by purchasing promissory notes. In 1925, the German Bauhüttentag , as a conference of the management of existing social construction companies, finally even passed various resolutions on March 15 and 16, which were aimed at the formation of a high-performance, national construction company.

Already in § 2 of the statute of the German building trade federation of May 1922 as purpose u. a. the socialization of the entire housing sector as well as the goal of producing all buildings according to needs and public economic principles ( public economy ). Accordingly, the Leipzig trade union day of construction workers applied for the housing issue to be dealt with at the ADGB federal congress in the same year. However, the desperate economic conditions of the inflation period up to the introduction of the Rentenmark made the practical founding of own business organizations in the environment of free trade unions appear to be of secondary importance - the subject of the housing question was repeatedly postponed until the economic consolidation in the German Reich.

Foundation of the DEWOG association in the trade union and cooperative environment

With his lecture New Ways to Build Small Homes , Martin Wagner finally developed on January 26, 1924, based on a description of the economic situation of housing cooperatives since the imperial era after the First World War , the political and social upheavals of the constitutional phase of the Weimar Republic and the inflation period, the concept of a three-tier local association on the basis of building cooperative, municipal and trade union cooperation for the purpose of creating living space in residential areas, initially for members of the above Free trade union associations and associated housing associations with a corresponding political orientation.

The DEWOG, together with the Association of Social Construction Companies (VsB), as a producer organization of the free trade union building works movement, was supposed to enable the supply of a cooperative-organized consumer side of those looking for accommodation. The involvement of existing goods and consumer cooperatives , such as the shops of the consumer cooperative Berlin and the surrounding area ( Konsum ), in the social environment of free trade unions and the social democratic parties was consciously initiated in settlement projects.

The intention was therefore not only a union right to co-determination in capitalist production, but the concrete development of publicly owned enterprises of the organized workers and employees - as a way to the “active democratization of today's economic system” as well as a step “towards the practical implementation of socialism” (ADGB Congress in Hamburg 1928). Operating surpluses, insofar as these do not flow to the members provided for, i.e. the “broad masses of employees”, should always be used to strengthen and develop those publicly owned companies (3rd AfA trade union congress in Hamburg, 1928).

Only after the end of the inflationary period and a currency reform with the introduction of the Rentenmark did the municipalities manage to make the construction industry relevant to the dismantling of massive housing supply problems (which not only existed in the industrial metropolis of Berlin in the pre-war period) by means of subsidies from house interest tax income (burden on prematurely discharged housing stock) to crank.

As of April 14, 1924, the subsidiary GEHAG (Gemeinnützige Heimstätten-, Spar- und Bau-Aktiengesellschaft AG) under the direction of the architect Richard Linneke, who was replaced the following year by Franz Gutschmidt (board member 1925 to 1933), operated as a non-profit Berlin project developer and property developer . Richard Linneke, succeeding Martin Wagner (who, as Schöneberger Stadtbaurat, was appointed to the Stadtbaurat of the Berlin magistrate), headed DEWOG in the Mark Brandenburg and organized the establishment of DEWOG subsidiaries in other provinces of the German Empire. "... Dewog is a central company that has created local subsidiaries for practical housing construction ... Dewog branches today exist in: Altona, Augsburg, Berlin, Braunschweig, Bremen, Breslau, Dresden, Essen, Frankfurt / Main, Gleiwtz, Hamburg, Harburg, Königsberg / Pr., Leipzig, Munich, Rostock, Schwerin. All of these companies and branches build in a larger district, also outside their headquarters ... ”(Richard Linneke 1931). From 1925, residential complexes were created for existing building cooperatives (support for existing association members, if necessary local start-ups) and municipal housing companies. The management of these residential complexes should generally be carried out regionally in the cooperative self-organization of the residential complexes and settlement residents. The settlement cooperatives in the Prussian province of Brandenburg were mostly established as Gewoba with the addition of the place name. In Berlin, the EINFA (Berlin Society for the Promotion of Single-Family Home Owning and Administrative Organization of GEHAG) practically operated as an administrative body, as long as no cooperative organization was available, e.g. B. in the Britzer Hufeisensiedlung (reform housing construction with today's UNESCO World Heritage status).

GEHAG organizational scheme, GEHAG shareholders, Berlin around 1930

The following shareholders initially provided GEHAG with share capital of RM 50,000. Those shareholders were free trade union organizations such as the general association as well as the Berlin local cartels of the General German Trade Union Federation (ADGB), the General Free Employees Federation (AfA-Bund), the General German Civil Service Federation (ADB), the Association of Social Construction Companies (VsB), the Berlin Housing Services - Gesellschaft mbH (WFG as the legal predecessor of the Berlin GSW ), the Allgemeine Ortskrankenkasse der Stadtgemeinde Neukölln ( AOK ), the bank of workers, employees and civil servants AG (workers' bank) and the building cooperatives Freie Scholle eG zu Berlin-Tegel, the Neukölln building cooperative, which tend to be social-democratic Ideal eG, the Siedlungsgenossenschaft Lichtenberger Gartenheim eG (LiGa), the Bohnsdorfer Arbeiterbaugenossenschaft Paradies eG, as well as the Beamtenwohnungsverein zu Neukölln eG were also represented by the Association of German Book Printers , the Association of Lithographers and Stone Printers , the Association of Bookbinders and the Verb and the Graphic Aid Workers, the German Building Trade Association and the Association of Factory Workers in Germany . As friendly companies, Volksfürsorge-Versicherung AG and Konsumgenossenschaft Berlin und Umgegend eG (Konsum) participated in the construction projects - Volksfürsorge participated in the financing - while Konsum operated the stores that were built in various settlements. At times, GEHAG also looked after the Berliner Spar- und Bauverein eG (today's Berliner Bau- und Wohnungsgenossenschaft von 1892 eG) - for this the housing estate at Schillerpark was built on the outskirts in Berlin-Wedding (now also a UNESCO World Heritage Site ) - based on the chief architect's designs the GEHAG, Bruno Taut (from 1924 until the National Socialist confiscation of the free trade union assets and conformity of GEHAG from May 2, 1933 in that function).

GEHAG in the DEWOG revision group, organizational scheme of free trade union-cooperative community economy around 1930 (extract Novy + Prinz 1987 p. 124, the source of which is the AGk Archive for Cooperative Culture Bielefeld)

As a DEWOG contact architect in the Prussian provincial towns of the Mark Brandenburg, insofar as they were dominated by social democracy (workers and employees of industrial settlements, etc.) and were open to modern, new building , the young man often acted in close contact with DEWOG manager Richard Linneke in housing development Berlin architect Willi Ludewig (Trebbin, Luckenwalde, Finsterwalde, Guben, Cottbus and others). Also noteworthy is the Rathenower row construction -gated at the Friedrich-Ebert-Ring for employees of the optical industry in Rathenow designed by the architect Celler Otto Haesler .

The younger brother and architect in the partnership of the brothers Taut & Hoffmann (Franz), Max Taut , was always directly relevant to various unions and continuously active. After his still Expressionist tomb Wissinger with arcade arches in the Stahndorfer Friedhof south of Berlin (1921) he planned and directed the construction of the ADGB office building in Wallstrasse ( Berlin-Mitte ; some expressionist Walter Würzbach designed the interior for the ADGB office building , from 1924 to 1926 the association house of the German book printers at Dudenstrasse 10 ( Berlin-Kreuzberg ) and from 1928 to 1930 the administration building of the Reichsknappschaft on Breitenbachplatz in Berlin-Wilmersdorf . He also planned the ADGB exhibition hall at the GeSoLei in Düsseldorf for 1926 . In Berlin-Spandau , from 1929 to 1931, Max Taut designed a bakery factory for the associated consumer cooperative Berlin und Umgegend eG on Telegrafenweg near Havel, consisting of two symmetrically parallel wings around a courtyard, again in a skeleton construction (partly steel, partly reinforced concrete) with brick infills. Somewhat later, from 1930 to 1932, the same consumer building owner built the high-rise department store on Kreuzberg's Oranienplatz in Berlin. In terms of the clear and rational design language of that urban New Building , Max Taut thus explicitly proved to be significantly more consistent and avant-garde than his older brother, Bruno Taut, who was dedicated to the construction of housing developments by GEHAG - who worked in collaboration with horticultural and open-air planners such. B. Leberecht Migge ( "everyone self") temporarily nor of greenery, suburban garden city -Idyll including tenants' gardens, however, preferred in niedriggeschossiger "densified structure" as it even before the First World War in Berlin-Altglienicke at Falkenberg in the paint box settlement for the German Garden City Society and later in the Garden City Colony Reform near Magdeburg .

The young Austrian architect Hans Waloschek , like his older brother Willi (including their wives), was already active in the Viennese settler movement in 1922 and worked there in the office of the Austrian Settlers Association, headed by Professor Dr. Otto Neurath (sociologist, philosopher) helped develop new residential areas in the area around Vienna, such as the Hütteldorf Eden am Wienerwald , where its residents had to do relevant self-help road construction work (around 2000 working hours per settler person). In 1926 Hans Waloschek went on a study trip to the Netherlands . to take a look at the local art and architecture movement De Stijl on site as well as to Germany to study the modern and functional architectural style as well as rationalization and typification methods of the New Building of Weimar Modernism. At the beginning of 1927 Waloschek moved to Berlin - with professional letters of recommendation from the Austrian Settlers' Association - and looked for the managing director of DEWOG, Richard Linneke. On Linneke's recommendation, Waloschek was employed in the Berlin office of the young but professionally well-established architect Willi Ludewig. Waloschek had been working with the lawyer and DEWOG association auditor Dr. Ernst Bodien friends. Soon, good and trusting private contacts were apparently established between Richard Linneke, Ernst Bodien, Willi Ludewig and Hans Waloschek. Towards the end of 1927, Hans Waloschek was offered the opportunity to move from the architecture office of DEWOG contact architect Willi Ludewig to a well-paid planning position in DEWOG's construction office in Central Germany . Hans Waloschek then married his life partner Grete Stark (who was also active in the Viennese settler movement until the dissolution of the Austrian settlers' association until 1924) and began his work initially with the aim of founding a DEWOG subsidiary in Dresden . Waloschek was sent to Dresden by DEWOG headquarters in Berlin with 5,000 RM in cash to set up a branch there. Such was registered as GEWOG Dresden on May 7, 1928 as a company in the commercial register of the city of Dresden. Waloschek took on the role of director.

However, the local local politician Richard Rösch was designated as GEWOG managing director as early as 1927 . This trained carpenter and later newspaper editor (eventually head of the Aachener Volksblatt) was involved in the social democratic workers and trade union movement. After separating from his first wife, a member of the Prussian state parliament, Rösch moved to Dresden. From 1917 to 1922 he was USPD but -member, returned in 1922 as editor of the Dresdner Volkszeitung in the Sopade back and already represented in 1923 the party as Dresden City Council, took over the local group's presidency and held various committee and board positions in local municipal enterprises. In collaboration with Richard Rösch, Hans Waloschek caused a national sensation with the construction of the new large housing estate Trachau (Hans Richter settlement) in the Dresden suburb as an important example of new building . Rösch was also a member of the supervisory board of Gewobag , which was involved in the construction of the Trachau settlement, and of Dresdner Baugemeinschaft GmbH. With regard to centers of cultural and political encounters and the venues for social democracy and trade unions, Waloschek and Rösch were also active in the construction of communal people's houses in Riesa and Dresden-West from 1928 onwards .

As the dominant central organization, DEWOG always held the majority shares in such regional subsidiaries and branches in other provinces of the German Reich. The DEWOG director and architect Richard Linneke also spoke about such organizational structures while traveling internationally. B. 1931 at the Swiss Association for Housing and Housing Reform, as well as at congresses of the trade union federations organized in the ADGB or at a smaller regional level at local building cooperatives and construction companies to be supervised with regard to building projects.

National Socialism and DAF

In the Thousand Year Reich (1933 to 1945), after the Nazi takeover / exercise of power, not only were union organization activities stopped, but also free-trade union companies of the ADGB were quickly occupied, confiscated and the assets of the German Labor Front (DAF) under the leadership of Robert Ley . The DEWOG general association was dissolved and the National Socialist DAF took its place and thus, also operating in other branches of the economy, soon became the financially strongest mass organization in the Nazi Reich. Such DAF companies continued to compete specifically with German private-sector companies (their ownership, however, changed in aryanization campaigns under considerable pressure, mostly with official participation).

The social democratic Dresden GEWOG managing director Richard Rösch was arrested in March 1933 and taken into protective custody in the Dresden Mathildenstrasse prison until the end of April . He was forcibly removed from his political and professional offices. After being mistreated while in detention, he was released from custody, seriously ill, and his family moved to the provincial town of Cunewalde , where his second wife's family lived. Three years later he died of a stroke on October 18, 1936.

The Berlin City Planning Council and relevant co-initiator of both the VsB and the DEWOG movement, Dr.-Ing. Martin Wagner , was dismissed from his position as town planning officer of the Berlin magistrate as well as from the public service, to which he had been part for many years since 1911, once as a city architect in Rüstringen near Bremerhaven , shortly after the National Socialist seizure of power in 1933 . Wagner emigrated to Turkey in 1935 (during Kemal Ataturk's reign) initially as a town planning consultant, and then in 1938 to the United States for university teaching activities (Harvard in Cambridge Mass.) . In the post-war period he only worked theoretically until his death on May 28, 1957. His organizational and baupraktisches expertise was with housing at-sufficient in the reconstruction phase of the destroyed post-war Germany, even in light of millions of expellees apparently from the eastern provinces no longer in demand from remaining in the realm colleagues shaft.

Decentralized self-administration of housing estate residents according to the former free trade union ideal organizational scheme of an economic democracy, e.g. For example, the Berlin DEWOG subsidiary GEHAG, Nazi rulers were suspicious. A hierarchical and strict " leader principle " with system-compliant party members loyal to the Nazi party for a fictitious people or company community was also introduced and enforced in social housing at communal housing companies from the Weimar period . The principles of economic self-organization and democratic participation - also in housing cooperatives - were thus liquidated.

Registered share from April 1939 of the "NEUE HEIMAT" non-profit housing and settlement company of the German Labor Front in the Gau Mark Brandenburg, public limited company

The various other regional DEWOG subsidiaries (Gewoba's, GEWOG, etc.) were also brought into line with local municipal u. a. Housing associations forcibly merged into larger organizational units and from 1939 onwards, for each German Gau, formed from co-ordinated and forcibly merged, communal or similar housing companies from the former Weimar Republic for the purpose of social housing , for example the NEUE HEIMAT NH in the Gau Mark Brandenburg . Often the NH predecessors were the regional DEWOGs (formerly a free trade union revision association), which were brought into line from May 1933. National Socialists in leading positions in the construction and housing industry and DAF party companies thus had every reason in spring 1945 to cover their tracks with extensive destruction of files before the Allied occupiers appeared .

The Berlin GEHAG, also renamed as the regional housing welfare company of the DAF, finally exercised the central administration of previous and newly built housing complexes of the social housing construction of the 1930s in a new and enlarged organizational form - now, however, new housing estates with pitched or hipped roofs were carried out and folk façade decorations in homeland security style.

The changed demands on architecture in the time of National Socialism, including the renaissance of Heimatschutz architectural style, are already presented in detail in other articles.

The German Labor Front DAF of the National Socialist regime had its head office built at Potsdamer Strasse 182 from 1938–1939 (Berlin-Schöneberg) for asset management. It was planned from 1935–1936 by the leading architect, DAF, Julius Schulte-Frohlinde (registered monument in Berlin LDA, administration building of the German Labor Front ).

With the promulgation of the laws and ordinances of the Nazi war economy in 1939, the production of housing largely came to a standstill, because material and construction worker resources were now concentrated in defense structures and armaments factories. In spite of this, state building and planning departments theoretically continued their typification and standardization efforts for a "social housing for broad strata of a national community" in the future post-war period ( Ernst Neufert 's standard / type studies, planning of motor vehicle traffic axes, conception of future locations Suburban residential areas, etc.). In 1940 the first German non-profit housing law (WGG) was enacted - but initially without any real, practical function due to the lack of housing options.

Post-war period - breaks and biographical continuities

The Hamburg branch of NH took over the lead management of the group that had been transferred to the newly founded DGB (as a unified union) in the post-war period, initially only in the British zone of occupation and then nationwide. Apparently, the Nazi name creation Neue Heimat continued to fit into the political post-war landscape of the Federal Republic - with a million times the number of expellees from former German eastern provinces (which have been Russian and Polish since 1945 according to the Yalta Agreement). The SPD chairman Kurt Schumacher also argued as a displaced person. But even in the urban development staff in post-war Germany, the continuity of the established staff and their ropes continued to exist (those returning from exile met with reservations) - experienced engineers were indispensable for the reconstruction. However, the architectural trend of rational modernity in connection with an ideology of organic-car-friendly cities and structured functional zones had meanwhile established itself internationally (traffic route planning was continued in both parts of Germany).

After the end of the war in 1945, GEHAG was initially managed for a number of years as a DAF company that was to be dissolved by fascist National Socialism. The transfer of ownership by the allied wartime victorious powers , at least in three western occupation zones and the three western sectors of Berlin (American, British, French), which Karl-Heinz Peters, who was over a hundred years old (long-time chairman of the post-war GEHAG) in his paperback appeal Von the charity for profit… . detailed, took place in equal thirds to two newly founded trade union organizations, on the one hand the German trade union federation DGB, on the other hand the German employee union DAG - as well as now explicitly also to the state of Berlin , as there were some communal residential complexes / companies during the Nazi era merged with GEHAG of DAF.

As an antipole to Karl-Heinz Peters, the (ambitious and benevolent) union member Dr. Kurt Hirche in 1966 in his presentation "The economic enterprises of the trade unions", recapitulating those protracted restitution processes that lasted until 1963 with regard to various trade union companies and company holdings of the ADBG, the consumer cooperative movement, as well as various Christian unions, civil servants 'and employees' professional associations (according to Sectors classified), from the Imperial Era of the German Empire and the Weimar Republic by the Allied control authorities in post-war occupation zones and their successor institutions in the Federal Republic and Berlin (West). After all, in 1945, after the decision of the Allied Control Council, these were initially completely confiscated as property of the Nazi organization that had been brought into line with the DAF "German Labor Front". In particular, it turned out to be difficult that after the experiences of the National Socialists 'seizure of power at the end of the Weimar Republic or by means of violent measures and repression, instead of the previously politically and culturally fragmented diversification of the workers' organizations, a unified trade union movement now only organized by industry is sought has been. In particular, the establishment of new trade unions intended in this way became a massive obstacle to the economic and legal evidence of the various legal succession claims made from 1945 in four occupation zones of the former Reich territory, which was not only reduced in size but also divided as a result of the Yalta Agreement - from which, from 1949, the new states Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) and German Democratic Republic (GDR) emerged. Initially in the British occupation zone, a first trade union congress in Bielefeld in August 1946 reached an agreement with the authorized representative of the military government about the due return of the union assets. In April 1947 a control council directive existed that the "German Trade Union Federation" DGB, established with the approval of the military government (British zone), as a sufficiently legitimized institution, was able to conduct restitution negotiations in accordance with the implementing provisions issued in 1947 (supplemented in spring 1948) . By decision of the federal organ of the DBG, the VTG "Property and Trust Company of the German Trade Union Federation for the British Zone of Occupation and the State of Bremen mbH" was founded as an instrument and legal successor with a capital of initially only 80,000 Reichsmarks. Likewise, such VTGs were created in the other occupation zone and state union confederations. In autumn 1949 the united "German Trade Union Confederation" DGB was founded in the Federal Republic of Germany, which had emerged from the three western occupation zones (central headquarters in Düsseldorfer Stromstrasse) - and that of the British zone organizationally became the central VTG. It was only later that the more conservative "German Employees' Union" DAG was founded as a professional association. B. The still young lawyer Karl-Heinz Peters (he did not enter professional life until the 1930s) represented the British custodian for the housing industry. The DGB and the DAG as "successor organizations" (legal succession was not possible) had to laboriously and in detail begin the verification of each individual, former trade union or consumer cooperative company. Since the trade unions as unincorporated associations of persons z. If, for example, they were unable to acquire real estate, personally-authorized representatives of the former trade union organizations or asset management companies of various legal forms were previously registered in the official land registers (Richard Linneke, Hans Walloschek, etc.). Insofar as these persons, who were legitimized by official documents, had survived the war, a third party had to decide - always at their own discretion - which organization followed the tradition and goals of the earlier National Socialist rulers within the scope of the "Gleichschaltung" to the DAF legally dissolved association of the Weimar Republic should continue. In the British occupation zone, on February 4, 1949, the first meeting of a "union review committee" set up to negotiate the return took place. Small-scale individual claims for confiscated land, mortgages and company investments were dealt with. Such a procedure lasted about a decade in Germany. Claims to other seized assets, such as cash, bank balances, receivables, securities and movables, on the other hand, were only brought into legal action in the Federal Compensation Act of 1953 or the Federal Restitution Act of 1957. After all, 17 years passed after the end of the Nazi Reich until the workers' organizations had carried out that difficult asset reorganization in the context of "retransfer" and "reparation". In addition, of course, not only the business "assets" were transferred, but also the claims on the individual legal objects were always to be taken into account retrospectively. It is evident that many properties and companies were in a ruinous condition after the Second World War - ultimately financed by the membership fees of the members of the new trade union federations, an arduous phase of reconstruction began.

In the fourth book chapter on housing construction (pages 231 to 281), Dr. Kurt Hirche explicitly how the reintegration of the former regional housing care company of DEWOG under the umbrella of the "Neue Heimat" (NS-Gleichschaltung name was retained), now with their headquarters in Hamburg, was consciously and systematically carried out by the asset management holding of the DGB. The individual industry unions of the DBG provided - promptly and successively - the necessary, substantial share capital to restore the economic capacity of reintegrated NH regional companies (formerly DEWOG) - as well as for sensible group acquisitions. The main task of reorganizing the "Neue Heimat" was the business economist Heinrich Plett, who, coming from the restituted Nassau homestead, was delegated to the Hamburg headquarters as executive chairman of the board of the NH. The DGH-Vermögensholding under the corporate umbrella of "Neue Heimat" had finally reintegrated 34 regional housing companies by 1964. The co-ordinated salaried housing company of the former German trade assistant association (national-conservative tradition), the Gagfah (non-profit joint stock company for salaried homes), was z. B. was sold by the DAF to the Reichsversicherungsanstalt für saline employees during the Nazi era - it remained in the Federal Republic, now owned by the Federal Insurance Agency for Salaried Employees BfA (which privatized it in the 2000s, currently in Vonovia's portfolio). Retransfer claims of the DBG and the DAG with regard to the Gagfah were settled and compensated in another way. The formerly relevant financial institution, the "Workers Bank", was reorganized as a union "Bank for the Common Economy" - the union "Volksfürsorge" insurance organization was soon available again as a source of finance for housing companies.

NH Group, graphic organizational scheme of the corporate group "Neue Heimat" with headquarters in Hamburg, which was diversified into regional and specialized service subsidiaries in 1964

The " Neue Heimat " group was reorganized several times over the next decade and diversified through regional mergers and the spin-off of specialized subsidiaries - right up to the largest housing company and the most powerful construction project development service provider in the market-oriented Western Europe.

Such expansion and gigantomania endeavors, however - with already falling demand for housing (market saturation in the Federal Republic) - in the hubris "... With us you can order a whole city ..." of the successor and "foster son" of Heinrich Plett, the NH executive chairman Albert Vietor. Even this further development - after the "Neue Heimat Scandal" (SPIEGEL publication in 1982, etc.) was deeply shaken by now, but apparently still hopeful about possible reforms, trade union official Dr. Kurt Hirche and in his book "The Colossus Staggered? - The Trade Union Enterprises Between Claims and Reality" from 1984 again appropriately presented.

Privatization of union and municipal companies

The building stock that remained after the gradual privatization from 1998 (partly residential property) is partly owned by the stock exchange-oriented corporation Deutsche Wohnen SE .

However, from 1987 onwards, various federal states permanently took over regional stocks into the possession of municipal housing associations (in Hesse the GWH, in Berlin as WIR - currently the Gewobag WB, in Bremen the Gewoba, in Hamburg the SAGA / GWG etc.).

The above-mentioned, once associated housing cooperatives were able to repair and maintain their building stocks from the DEWOG / GEHAG founding period, which were significantly impaired in the Second World War as a result of fighting or bomb damage, in the post-war period. In this area, the historical reappraisal of the foggy brown Nazi era, including harmonization, leadership principle and elimination of cooperative co-determination ( one man - one vote ) is carried out and presented relatively furthest - but against the advantageous background of family members of the cooperative that often spanned generations in living cultural neighborhood (documents and oral tradition).

In the 1980s, the German Trade Union Confederation (DGB), like other trade union federations, gradually separated from its non-profit company participations in the course of the Neue Heimat scandal , so that an economic democracy of the workforce increasingly only in categories and fields of collective bargaining autonomy and co-determination takes place. With regard to German municipal, state and state holdings in corporate assets - following the example of British Thatcherism - degressive economic developments in the national economy in post-reunification with regard to liberalization ( laissez-faire ) and serious privatization s-wave had an impact .

Hypothesis: In municipal, state and public housing companies, Nazi protagonists probably still had sufficient opportunity to clean up files (possibly destroy them) after 1945. Various Berlin district town hall building archives were z. B., shortly before the impending Soviet invasion / occupation of the Reich capital, deliberately set alight by SS commandos (politics of the burned ashes). Various certificates and documents from those non -profit- making companies that were brought into line by the Nazi regime are probably difficult to find. In addition, those professional specialists were probably in demand in the reconstruction of the destroyed post-war Germany (and in the case of denazification they tended to be treated mildly and indulgently).

More biographies

No information is available about the further development and whereabouts of August Ellinger after the Nazi seizure of power in 1933.

The former GEHAG board member from 1925 to 1933, the social democrat Franz Gutschmidt, who lived in the Britzer Hufeisensiedlung, was with the American allies at the time of the custodian administration of former DAF companies from May 1945 (which according to Control Council Act No. 2 actually initially became a National Socialist organization were intended for dissolution and liquidation) as a local and honorable subcustodian, but he was obviously so aged that, according to Karl-Heinz Peters, he "no longer had any influence on the course of events". Gutschmidt died in 1951, before GEHAG was restituted to thirds of the shares in the DGB, the DAG and the State of Berlin.

The former DEWOG auditor and lawyer, already Dr. According to Karl-Heinz Peters, Ernst Bodien became chairman of the new auditing association for the housing industry in the post-war period. He died in 1968.

Richard Linneke was appointed on May 6, 1933, by the NSDAP to bring delegates such as B. the later SS general of the "miracle weapons" Hans Kammler , at the same time forced to resign from the supervisory board of communal Berlin housing companies such as Gewobag (M.Bienert, p. 72 + 73), which as the successor of the RFG " Reichsforschungsgesellschaft für Wirtschaftlichkeit im Building and Housing "from 1933 built the large" Reichsforschungssiedlung "in Berlin-Haselhorst in strict north-south linear construction with flat roofs (today: Fred-Forbat-Siedlung). After the expropriation of DEWOG, Linneke tried to acquire contracts as a freelance architect - compulsory memberships introduced by the National Socialists in their members supervising Reich Chamber of Culture , such as that of the Fine Arts, made such continuous professional practice in the Reich difficult. He died in 1983.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Klaus Novy, Michael Prinz: Illustrated history of the common economy, economic self-help in the labor movement from the beginning to 1945 . 1st edition. Verlag JHW Dietz Nachf. GmbH, Berlin / Bonn 1985, ISBN 3-8012-0111-2 , p. 118 ff .
  2. ↑ Martin Wagner: The socialization of construction companies . Carl Heymanns Verlag, Berlin 1919.
  3. ↑ Walter Euchner, Helga Grebing, F.-J. Stegmann, Peter Langhorst, Traugott Jänichen, Norbert Friedrich: History of social ideas in Germany. Socialism - Catholic social teaching - Protestant social ethics. A manual . Ed .: Helga Grebing. 2nd Edition. VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden 2005, ISBN 978-3-531-14752-9 , p. 1148 .
  4. ↑ August Ellinger: Die Bauhüttenbewegung: their essence, their goal and their development. Briefly presented for the German trade unions . In: ADGB General German Trade Union Federation (Hrsg.): 48 pages . Publishing company of the General German Trade Union Federation, Berlin February 2, 1927, p. 48 .
  5. ^ August Ellinger: Ten years of building works movement . Ed .: General German Trade Union Federation ADGB. Publishing company of the ADGB, Berlin February 1, 1930, p. 61 ff .
  6. ↑ Richard Linneke: The DEWOG organization in Germany . In: Swiss Association for Housing and Housing Reform (ed.): Das Wohnen - Swiss magazine for housing . tape 6 , monthly magazine issue 1 January. Neuland-Verlag AG, Zurich 1931, p. 3 .
  7. ↑ Richard Linneke: The DEWOG organization in Germany ... ed .: s. O.! s. o.!, Zurich January 2, 1931, p. 2 .
  8. ^ Georg Kaufmann: The DEWOG organization in Germany . In: GRS - trade union review for Switzerland. Monthly of the Swiss Federation of Trade Unions , vol. 24 (1932), pp. 12-18.
  9. ↑ Wolfgang Schächen: 75 years of GEHAG 1924-1999 . Ed .: Wolfgang Schächen. Gebr. Mann Verlag, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-7861-2310-1 .
  10. ↑ Pedro Waloschek: In the footsteps of the architect Hans Waloschek: A partial report on his buildings in Germany 1928-1933 . Ed .: Pedro Waloschek. 1st edition. Norderstedt: Books on Demand, Norderstedt 2009, ISBN 978-3-8370-9416-9 .
  11. ↑ Central building of the asset management of the Deutsche Arbeitsfron . stadtentwicklung.berlin.de. Retrieved October 16, 2019.
  12. ↑ Andres Lepik, Hilde Strobl u. a .: Die Neue Heimat 1950–1982. A social democratic utopia and its buildings . In: Andres Lepik, Hilde Strobl (Hrsg.): Exhibition catalog publication of the architecture archive of the Technical University of Munich and the Hamburg architecture archive of the Hamburg Chamber of Architects in cooperation with the Museum for Hamburg History . 1st edition. Edition DETAIL, Munich 2019, ISBN 978-3-95553-476-9 , pp. 236 .
  13. ↑ Karl-Heinz Peters: From the public benefit to profit. Privatization Victim Gehag - Challenge for Alternative Housing Policy . 1st edition. VSA Verlag, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-89965-720-3 .
  14. ↑ Dr. Kurt Hirche: The business enterprises of the trade unions . 1st edition. Econ-Verlag GmbH, Düsseldorf and Vienna January 1, 1966.
  15. ↑ Dr. Kurt Hirche: The colossus is shaking? Ed .: Econ. 1st edition. Econ Verlag, Düsseldorf and Vienna 1984, ISBN 3-430-14694-1 .
  16. ↑ Pedro Waloschek: The architect HANS WALOSCHEK: His life and his friends . BoD - Books on Demand, 2009, ISBN 978-3-8370-8084-1 ( google.de [accessed February 10, 2019]).
  17. ↑ Pedro Waloschek: The architect HANS WALOSCHEK: His life and his friends . BoD - Books on Demand, 2009, ISBN 978-3-8370-8084-1 , pp. 21 and 55 ( google.de [accessed on February 10, 2019]).