Josef Umlauf

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Josef Umlauf (born November 13, 1906 in Ober Altstadt , Austria-Hungary , today the Czech Republic ; † August 15, 1989 in Grünwald near Munich ) was a German architect, and at the same time urban and spatial planner. He belonged to the Nazi planning elite in Heinrich Himmler's RKF planning staff (“ General Plan East ”). Umlauf worked after 1945 a. a. as association director of the Ruhr coal district settlement association ( SVR ) (1959-1965), to which he had belonged in various functions since 1938.

Education and work experience

Josef Umlauf was involved in the youth movement in the 1920s, he was a member of the ethnic-German nationalist Sudeten German Wandervogel and in the Sudeten German Freischar . In 1983, in an oral statement to Gerd Gröning and Joachim Wolschke-Bulmahn, Umlauf confirmed that "ideas from the youth movement have probably become effective in the area of ​​settlement and urban development." From 1924 to 1928 Umlauf studied at the Technical University of Vienna and then at the TH Berlin (with the architects Hermann Jansen and Heinrich Tessenow ). Like Josef Umlauf, Hermann Jansen also took part in the Nazi planning for the "integrated eastern regions" during the war.

The diploma acquired in Vienna was recognized in Germany in 1930; at the same time he worked in the Berlin office of the architect Jean Krämer . At the same time he joined the Sudeten German German National Socialist Workers' Party (DNSAP).

As an employee of the architect Rudolf Wolters , Umlauf took part in an international competition for a new theater in Kharkov (USSR) in 1931 .

From 1931 and 1933 respectively, Umlauf worked on the magazines "Die Baugilde" (magazine of the Association of German Architects ) and "Die Form" ( German Werkbund ). In 1934 Umlauf joined the newly founded planning department of the Reichsheimstättenamt of the National Socialist German Labor Front (DAF) and worked his way up there in a short time (1936) to become head of the department. After Dieter Münk, he was "as senior building officer, head of the DAF architecture office " (from 1937).

Umlauf came into contact with the provincial land planning that had been developing since the 1920s . In 1937 he was also a clerk for the State Planning Community of Westphalia (Münster). In the same year he received German citizenship and joined the NSDAP .

He now also gained further planning experience by working as a district planner ( Arnsberg ) and finally in 1938 as a district planner for the Ruhr Coal District Association (SVR). In the autumn of 1938, Umlauf was made civil servants (Verbands-Baurat).

Umlauf was called up in the run-up to the Second World War , but he was able to return to his job in mid-March 1940 because the spatial planner Konrad Meyer needed him as a specialist in the RKF main department “Planning and Soil”.

Circulation in Nazi settlement planning for the 'new east'

Umlauf's tasks in the RKF planning department included “the development of general principles for the 'eastern reorganization' as well as advising the planners working on site. The intended coordination of the concrete plans with the goals and principles set out in the planning office is not achieved in many cases, if only because the corresponding plans are often not even presented to him. ”The“ general consultants for spatial planning ” working in the annexed areas were Circulation subject to technical supervision.

It was Josef Umlauf who understood the “new eastern areas” not only as areas of rural settlement development, but also expressly saw the (further) settlement of these territories as a task of urban planning. In doing so he referred u. a. to the system of "central places" developed by Walter Christaller . According to Michael Hartenstein, it was Umlauf who was responsible within the RKF "for developing the concept of the 'central locations' for the 'integrated eastern regions'". Just like the agricultural sociologist Herbert Morgen and the geographer Angelika Sievers , both of whom were also active at Konrad Meyer, Josef Umlauf believed he was making contributions to the (further) development of the NS “ Volksgemeinschaft ” from 1940 onwards . A “national community”, conceived without war economic anomalies and with a German population (in the sense of the definition of the Nazi regime ) , settling in a greatly expanded “Greater German Reich” - and also in a professional-social one that has been newly attuned to the ideological goals of the state Composition. Umlauf advocated a "healthy division of labor between rural and urban areas" as part of the spatial planning of the "integrated eastern areas". For Umlauf, this meant in extreme cases that very small towns only had to perform " main village " functions or had to be developed into real small towns. A good insight into Umlauf's level of knowledge on the planning discussion at that time is provided by his article " The status of spatial planning for the incorporated eastern areas " (including explanations on district spatial planning sketches ).

Umlauf already saw interventions in land and property rights as easier after 1939, because with the advance of the Wehrmacht , 'new' territories in the east would allegedly offer compensation for planning interventions in the 'old Reich'. In contrast to the more agrarian utopian drafts of a group of spatial and regional planners (e.g. Walter Christaller, Herbert Frank, Friedrich Kann , Artur von Machui ), Umlauf also favored settlement scenarios with an urban orientation.

Photos for the opening of the exhibition “Planning and Construction in the East” (March 1941, Berlin- Dahlem ) showed Josef Umlauf surrounded by Fritz Todt , Reinhard Heydrich , Rudolf Hess , Martin Bormann , Konrad Meyer and Heinrich Himmler. The National Socialist Party and its claim to leadership also shaped Umlauf's spatial planning drafts. In cooperation with the German Academy for Urban Development, Reich and State Planning a . a. In 1943 Umlauf wrote a bibliography of urban planning and urban planning literature. Umlauf received at least 5400 Reichsmarks from the German Research Foundation for a joint study with the district planner Gottfried Bendemann on the development of settlements in the "integrated eastern areas".

Circulation further activities in the RKF

In May 1940, Umlauf had taken over the "Department of Spatial Planning and Urban Development" in the Planning Office of Office Group C of the RKF (later Main Department of Planning and Soil). In urban planning issues, Umlauf should play a key role within the RKF, as potentially competing other actors also appeared, such as the "Department of Urban Development and Housing Planning" ( Karl Neupert ) of the Reichsheimstättenamt .

“Umlauf took ten months to comment on 'urban planning in the new German eastern regions'. Umlauf tried in detail to summarize the contemporary objectives of urban development without restricting himself to the space given to him. (…) The main topic was the 'division' of the city into 'school districts with 4 - 4500 inhabitants', which at the same time corresponded to the size of a 'local branch of the party'. (...) In his memory, Josef Umlauf reported that his essay had neither raised objections nor particularly encouraged, although he understood it to be the preparation of a manifesto on modern urban development and above all sought to challenge the planners around Albert Speer , ie the 'new designers '. "

As a result, Umlauf worked out General Order 13 / II 'Guidelines for the Planning and Design of Cities in the Integrated German Eastern Regions' (January 30, 1942) for the RKF , which contained the establishment of a network of distributed cities. The Reich Ministry of Labor and the Reich Commissioner for Social Housing ( Robert Ley ) took over the order. The latter sent the order u. a. to all district housing commissioners or to the housing and settlement authorities assigned to them. Werner Durth and Niels Gutschow assume that the order "became known in the planning offices of all administrative levels." However, the arrangement hardly had any impact on settlement practice. Durth and Gutschow attribute the importance of a manifesto to it:

"The significance of this arrangement, formulated in the sense of a manifesto for a new urban development, is that it is not specifically formulated for the 'reorganization' of the East, but rather takes a fundamental position on the city of the future. At its core, the arrangement is unmistakably Nazi: This is evidenced by claims such as that the 'order of the people's community, its structure and summary must also be reflected in the image of the city and that this structure is in accordance with the' structure of the political organization of the people's community in cells, local groups and districts' is to be brought. "

In further investigations and planning, Umlauf dealt with until 1943 a. a. also with questions of population distribution in the 'integrated eastern areas', and calculated with greatly reduced population figures; ie specifically: without a Jewish population that was previously expelled or already murdered. According to Konrad Meyer, Umlauf also provided the guidelines for the district planning plans. In retrospect Umlauf described the work at the RKF planning department as technically stimulating and “theoretically very fruitful.” His colleague at the time, the architect Udo von Schauroth , agreed with this judgment 40 years later.

In July 1943 Umlauf was sent to the Eastern Front as an officer candidate because he refused to join the SS 'voluntarily'. In 1944 he was taken prisoner by the Soviets. The SVR association director Albert Lange described Umlauf, according to Lange in a letter to Umlauf's mother in October 1944, as "his best employee and designated successor". The TH Hannover offered Umlauf a chair for urban development and regional planning.

After 1945: Josef Umlauf in the German regional planning scene

In the summer of 1946 Umlauf was again in charge of the “Regional Planning and Urban Development Department” at the SVR (Ober-Baurat). The Essen Spruchkammer fully approved Umlauf in January 1949. He was not even classified as a “fellow traveler” in this second panel proceedings . Various universities and technical colleges offered circulating professorships (again the TH Hannover, the agricultural faculty of the University of Bonn and the TH Aachen ). When Umlauf was elected second member of the SVR in December 1949, doubts about his Nazi past arose again, but he was able to dispel them. In the Nazi state, according to Umlauf, he “always worked purely factually”. After 1945, “objectivity” was a common justification for many spatial planners. In the proceedings against Konrad Meyer (1947), Umlauf denied the always political character of Nazi spatial planning - in stark contrast to the time before 1945, when the practical relevance of the work was repeatedly emphasized.

In February 1950, Umlauf was hired for twelve years at the SVR as a "technical assistant". “He is the second deputy to the association director.” On the occasion of his election, the association director Rappaport described Umlauf as “one of the most capable regional planners and urban developers”.

Umlauf belonged to the working group of state planners . In the 1950s he became a member of the German Academy for Urban Development and Regional Planning (1951) and the Academy for Spatial Research and Regional Planning (ARL) (1954, full member since 1963). From 1953 Umlauf also participated in commissions for the preparation of the Federal Building Act (1960). Universities are also interested in him again, but Umlauf, who never received a doctorate, received his doctorate from the Technical University of Braunschweig in 1958 . The doctoral thesis on “Nature and Organization of State Planning” was supervised by the architect and urban planner Johannes Göderitz . The historical outline of German spatial planning since 1910 contained neither critical remarks on National Socialism nor any self-justification. In 1959 Umlauf was elected director of the SVR.

In 1965 (until 1969) he finally took up a teaching position at the Technical University of Stuttgart (newly created “Professorship for Regional Planning and Regional Planning”), which he quickly ended in the student unrest and also because his RKF activities were constantly being discussed. Even after his retirement in 1970, Umlauf remained connected to the spatial planning scene through various memberships. In 1986 he published his contribution " On the development history of regional planning and spatial planning ".

Honors

See also

literature

  • Philipp Zakrzewski: Josef Umlauf - conditionally ready to talk. The work of a planner in National Socialism and in the young Federal Republic as reflected in contemporary documents. An attempt at reconstruction . In: Heinrich Mäding , Wendelin Strubelt (ed.): From the Third Reich to the Federal Republic. Contributions to a conference on the history of spatial research and spatial planning. Hanover: ARL 2009. (= ARL working material, No. 346), pp. 66–81; available online: [1] ISBN 978-3-88838-346-5
  • Ariane Leendertz: Creating order. German spatial planning in the 20th century . Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag 2008, ISBN 978-3-8353-0269-3
  • Academy for Spatial Research and Regional Planning (Ed., Red .: Gabriele Schöne…), 50 years of ARL in facts . Hanover (ARL) 1996, ISBN 3-88838-514-8
  • Niels Gutschow : Urban planning in the Warthegau 1939-1944 . In: Mechthild Rössler, Sabine Schleiermacher (ed.) With the assistance of Cordula Tollmien: The “General Plan East”. Main lines of the National Socialist planning and extermination policy. Berlin: Akademie Verlag 1993 = writings of the Hamburg Foundation for 20th Century Social History, pp. 232–270.
  • Gerd Gröning, Joachim Wolschke-Bulmahn , The love of the landscape. Part III: The eastward urge. On the development of land maintenance during National Socialism and during the Second World War in the "integrated eastern regions" . Munich 1987, ISBN 3-597-10535-1
  • Kurt Becker-Marx (Ed.): Spatial planning as an element of securing the future: Dedicated to Josef Umlauf (Festschrift) . With contributions by Friedrich Halstenberg , Jürgen Gramke , Joachim Gadegast. Essen: Bacht 1987, 159 pages, ISBN 3-87034-040-1
  • Horst Katzor , Norbert Ley , Werner Ernst , Josef Umlauf: The Ruhr coal district settlement association: remarks on the occasion of the adoption of the association director J. Umlauf on July 28, 1965 in Essen. In: Mitteilungen, 9th year, German Academy for Urban Development and Regional Planning. Düsseldorf 1965

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Wandervogelarchiv. Retrieved September 21, 2017 .
  2. ↑ Gröning, Wolschke-Bulmahn 1993, p. 21 (information from May 26, 1983).
  3. ^ Niels Gutschow: Urban planning in the Warthegau 1939-1944 . In: Mechthild Rössler, Sabine Schleiermacher with the collaboration of Cordula Tollmien (Ed.): The “Generalplan Ost”. Main lines of the National Socialist planning and extermination policy . Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1993, ISBN 3-05-002445-3 , pp. 234 f .
  4. ^ André Deschan: In the shadow of Albert Sperr. The architect Rudolf Wolters . Gebrüder Mann Verlag, Berlin 2016, p. 57.
  5. ^ Dieter Münk: The organization of space in National Socialism. A sociological investigation of ideologically based models in architecture, town planning and spatial planning of the Third Reich . Pahl-Rugenstein, Bonn 1993, ISBN 3-89144-175-4 , p. 492 .
  6. ↑ Ariane Leendertz: Creating order. German spatial planning in the 20th century . Wallstein-Verlag, Göttingen 2008, p. 110 .
  7. ^ Philipp Zakrzewski: Josef Umlauf - conditionally ready to talk. The work of a planner in National Socialism and in the young Federal Republic as reflected in contemporary documents. An attempt at reconstruction. In: Heinrich Mäding, Wendelin Strubelt (ed.): From the Third Reich to the Federal Republic. Contributions to a conference on the history of spatial research and spatial planning . ARL, Hannover 2009, p. 68 f .
  8. ↑ Philipp Zakrzewski: Josef Umlauf - conditionally ready to talk ... p. 68 .
  9. ^ Josef Umlauf: On urban planning in the new eastern areas . In: Raumforschung und Raumordnung, 5th year (1941), H. 3/4, pp. 100–122; Ders .: To bring town and country together . In: Neues Bauerntum 1940, No. 6, pp. 179-183.
  10. ^ Michael A. Hartenstein: New village landscapes. National Socialist settlement planning in the "integrated eastern areas" 1939 to 1944. Verlag Dr. Köster, Berlin 1998, ISBN 3-89574-295-3 , p. 207 .
  11. ↑ see also: Hartenstein 1998, p. 209.
  12. ↑ In: Neues Bauerntum, 34th year (1942), pp. 281–293; Josef Umlauf: The rural settlement development in the new eastern areas . In: Konrad Meyer (ed.): Landvolk im Werden. Berlin 1942, pp. 273-282. Insights into this type of National Socialist 'development planning' are also offered by: District Administrator Becker: main villages as social leadership communities . In: Monthly Issues for Nazi Social Policy, 9th year (1942), Issue 17–18, pp. 177–178.
  13. ↑ Philipp Zakrzewski: Josef Umlauf - conditionally ready to talk ... p. 70 .
  14. ↑ http://www.dfg.de/pub/generalplan/downloads/dfg_wissenschaft_planung_vertreibung_katalog.pdf , p. 13.
  15. ↑ What is meant is Umlauf's essay: On urban planning in the new German eastern areas . In: Raumforschung und Raumordnung, 5th year (1941), Issue 3/4, pp. 100–122.
  16. ^ Niels Gutschow: Urban planning in the Warthegau 1939-1944. In: Mechthild Rössler, Sabine Schleiermacher with the collaboration of Cordula Tollmien (Ed.): The “Generalplan Ost”. Main lines of the National Socialist planning and extermination policy . Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1993, p. 254 .
  17. ^ Niels Gutschow: Urban planning in the Warthegau 1939-1944 ... p. 254 f .
  18. ↑ Werner Durth, Niels Gutschow: Dreams in ruins. Urban planning 1940-1950 . Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich 1993, ISBN 3-423-04604-X , p. 95 .
  19. ↑ Durth, Gutschow 1993, p. 96.
  20. ↑ Ariane Leendertz: Creating order. German spatial planning in the 20th century . Wallstein-Verlag, Göttingen 2008, p. 150 f., 182 f .
  21. ↑ Philipp Zakrzewski: Josef Umlauf - conditionally ready to talk ... p. 75 (estate of J. Umlauf, TU Munich) .
  22. ↑ Ariane Leendertz: Creating order. German spatial planning in the 20th century . Wallstein-Verlag, Göttingen 2008, p. 223-225 .
  23. ↑ Philipp Zakrzewski: Josef Umlauf - conditionally ready to talk ... p. 76 .
  24. ↑ Ariane Leendertz: Creating order. German spatial planning in the 20th century . Wallstein-Verlag, Göttingen 2008, p. 222 f .
  25. ↑ Lemma Josef Umlauf . In: ARL (ed.): 50 years of ARL in facts . ARL, Hanover 1996, p. 258 .
  26. ↑ Philipp Zakrzewski: Josef Umlauf - conditionally ready to talk ... p. 78 f .
  27. ↑ https://www.arl-net.de/system/files/praesidien_seit_1946.pdf
  28. ^ Academy for Spatial Research and Regional Planning (Ed .: Gabriele Schöne ...): 50 years of ARL in facts . ARL, Hannover 1996, ISBN 3-88838-514-8 , pp. 258 .
personal data
SURNAME Umlauf, Josef
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German urban and spatial planner
DATE OF BIRTH November 13, 1906
PLACE OF BIRTH Upper old town , Czech Republic
DATE OF DEATH August 15, 1989
Place of death Grünwald near Munich