New home

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Logo of the Neue Heimat

The Neue Heimat (NH) was a non-profit German construction and housing company headquartered in Hamburg , which belonged to the German Trade Union Federation (DGB). Including the predecessor companies, it existed from 1926 to 1990.

history

The former company headquarters in Lübecker Straße 1, planned by Ernst May - after renovation (2012)
Corporate structure of Neue Heimat as of 1976
The high-rise building on Habichtsplatz in Hamburg-Barmbek-Nord , built in 1955 by Ernst May for Neue Heimat, is still a striking eye-catcher today

The core of what would later become the New Home consisted of union-owned housing companies that had been founded in the 1920s to supply workers with small apartments . In particular, the non-profit small housing construction company Groß-Hamburg (GKB) from 1926 assumed a management function.

The name originated in the time of National Socialism . In May 1933 the unions were expropriated and their assets transferred to the German Labor Front (DAF). In 1939, the company renamed the individual companies Neue Heimat .

After the Second World War, the DAF's assets were confiscated by the Allies. The New Home Hamburg was handed over to the DGB, which was re-established in 1949, by the British occupying forces . Heinrich Plett , chairman of the Neue Heimat Hamburg, united all union-owned construction and housing companies in Germany until 1954 on behalf of the DGB and thus created the large concern Neue Heimat . Plett won the architect Ernst May as planning manager .

With May as the planner, Neue Heimat started building large housing estates. The reconstruction was faced with the need to build new homes at least five million. By the end of the 1950s, the number of new homes in the Neue Heimat had increased to over 100,000 apartments. The settlements Parkstadt Bogenhausen (Munich), the garden city Farmsen (Hamburg), Grünhöfe (Bremerhaven), Lübeck-St. Lorenz and the Neue Vahr (Bremen).

After Plett's death in 1963, his “foster son” Albert Vietor took over the management of the large company, which already had 200,000 apartments. Mettenhof (Kiel), Osterholz-Tenever (Bremen), Königswiesen (Regensburg), Lohbrügge-Nord and Karlshöhe (Hamburg), Auefeld (Kassel), Leherheide in Bremerhaven, Monheim am were among the best-known German Neue Heimat residential complexes of the following years Rhine and Ratingen-West (both Mettmann district), Heidelberg-Emmertsgrund , Hasenbergl and Neuperlach (Munich).

Increasingly, the municipalities no longer succeeded in building the social infrastructure such as schools and kindergartens at the same pace as Neue Heimat built settlements. Thereupon the Neue Heimat also built these facilities. Because this activity was not compatible with the non-profit nature of residential construction, Neue Heimat first founded a commercial subsidiary Neue Heimat Kommunal in 1964 and Neue Heimat Städtebau in 1969 , with which it also expanded its range of products to commercial buildings such as the Elbe shopping center and the CCH congress center in Hamburg advanced. Neue Heimat has also been active abroad since 1962; in 1971 these business areas were bundled in Neue Heimat International . In the 1970s, Neue Heimat also got into the old town renovation business ( Hameln , Stade, etc.)

Die Neue Heimat was the leading construction company for large projects. When it was not noticed until 1970 during the preparations for the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich that around 4,000 accommodations were missing for journalists, the Neue Heimat was able to build the Olympic Press City according to plans by architect Alexander von Branca right on time for the opening .

With the oil crisis and the extensive completion of large housing construction in the post-war period, the group should have changed. According to historian Peter Kramper, “a public service company with a concept from the 1960s was no longer viable under the market conditions of the 1980s.” Instead, the commercial construction business was expanded at home and abroad. Countless project companies and subsidiaries emerged, the structure of which was no longer overlooked.

New home affair

On February 8, 1982, a report appeared in Der Spiegel , which revealed that several board members had personally enriched themselves under the leadership of Albert Vietor, in some cases directly from the tenants. The board members and other executives had set up their own companies through straw men , including Ernst Wölbern , founder of the Wölbern bank , and pushed overpriced orders to the Neue Heimat.

The material for the discovery had been offered to Spiegel by John Siegfried Mehnert, who had been dismissed as head of the press office at Neue Heimat.

A week later, the board of directors under DGB chairman Heinz Oskar Vetter dismissed the accused. From 1982 to 1986 Diether Hoffmann was spokesman for the management of the housing group. Further investigations revealed that the group had considerable debt. The board of directors was responsible for debts of several hundred million D-Marks, the main cause being mismanagement in foreign projects.

On December 7, 1982 the group announced the company figures, according to which there was a loss of 193 million  DM at Neue Heimat and 562 million DM at Neue Heimat Städtebau. The turnover in 1981 was around 6.4 billion DM. On January 25, 1983, the group published excerpts from an independent report by the auditing company Treuarbeit , from which it emerged that the former CEO Albert Vietor had caused the company a loss of 105 million DM through private deals . The group tried to reorganize itself by laying off and selling the housing stock.

Investigative Committee “Neue Heimat”, 1987

On September 18, 1986, the DGB tried to sell the remains of the union's own housing construction company after several weeks of negotiations at the symbolic price of one D-Mark to the company DNG Vermögensbildung GmbH of the Berlin bakery entrepreneur Horst Schiesser . The original letter of intent provided for a purchase price of DM 360 million, which was to be deferred until 2006 . The liabilities of the acquired Neue Heimat amounted to around 16 billion Deutschmarks. The sale met with a lack of understanding among the public. The press considered a medium-sized entrepreneur to be overwhelmed with the multi-billion dollar housing company. The symbolic purchase price of one D-Mark for over-indebted companies was also not known to the public at the time and aroused astonishment. Schiesser's restructuring plan was not accepted by the banks, so the contract was reversed on November 12, 1986. After lengthy trials, Schiesser received a severance payment worth millions, most of which was lost for the payment of lawyers.

completion

Signage designed by Ernst Hürlimann in 1975 in a Neue Heimat residential complex in Munich- Neuperlach

On November 25, 1986, a NH-Auffanggesellschaft was founded with the appointment of Heinz Sippel as trustee. After the sale of all the housing stock, he resigned his mandate in September 1990.

Most of the regional companies of the Neue Heimat were at this time either to the federal states (for example Bremen the GEWOBA , Hamburg the GWG Gemeinnützige Wohnungsgesellschaft , Berlin as WIR Wohnungsbaugesellschaft in Berlin mbH then Gewobag WB Wohnen in Berlin GmbH , Hesse the GWH , North Rhine-Westphalia LEG Real estate ) or sold to private investors (Baden-Württemberg and Bavaria). The Greven-based company Sahle Wohnen took over 5,500 apartments from the NWGS portfolio, mostly in North Rhine-Westphalia .

In Schleswig-Holstein and Lower Saxony there was no interest in the housing stocks there; other sales concepts came into play: In Schleswig-Holstein, a trade union-affiliated real estate trading company acquired the housing stock, which it later sold en bloc.

As a result of the regionalization of NH-Bremen, Neue Heimat Niedersachsen took over around 37,000 apartments from this and other companies, including the Nordwestdeutsche Siedlungsgesellschaft (NWDS). The resulting high pollution endangered the continued existence of NH Lower Saxony. This was secured in 1988 through the sale of around 8,200 apartments to ALLWO AG Hannover, which was co-founded by the trade union holding BGAG . This sold the apartments on to tenants and investors in accordance with the privatization concept developed by BGAG , around half of them through structural sales using the methods of real estate fraud .

On June 5, 1998, the liquidation of the Neue Heimat was completed by the merger of HVB (Hamburger Verwaltungs- und Betreuungs-Aktiengesellschaft) into BGAG ( Beteiligungsgesellschaft der Unions Aktiengesellschaft, formerly Beteiligungsgesellschaft für Gemeinwirtschaft AG ).

The former regional company Neue Heimat Niedersachsen , which at the time was known as BauBeCon Group, remained in union ownership until autumn 2005 when it was sold to Cerberus Capital Management . This was due to the financial problems at Allgemeine Hypothekenbank Rheinboden (AHBR) , as a result of which the unions sold their stake in the bank to the US financial investor Lone Star in the same year .

Aftermath

New home became a term with negative connotations for the large housing estates in the form of satellite towns of the 1960s and 1970s, which are no longer accepted today (catchwords “ urbanity through density ”, “ Athens Charter ”). It should be noted that the considerable housing shortage of the post-war period first had to be remedied through intensive development. In the massively bombed country, up to 14 million refugees and displaced persons were also looking for a roof over their heads.

As a result of the enrichment of several board members, the entrepreneurial activities of the trade unions came under fire. The affair also damaged the SPD, which is close to her. The New Home Investigative Committee of the Bundestag, which was set up in 1986 and presented its final report the following year, was also decisive . In 1990, the non-profit status in housing was abolished by law.

See also

literature

  • Wilhelm Kaltenborn : New Home - The years 1982 to 1990 . Results and evaluations, Düsseldorf 1990.
  • Andreas Kunz: The New Home Files. Crisis and liquidation of the largest housing construction group in Europe 1982–1998. Campus Verlag, Frankfurt 2002, ISBN 3-593-37164-2 .
  • Erwin K. Scheuch , Ute Scheuch: Managers in megalomania. Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, Reinbek 2003, ISBN 3-499-61481-2 .
  • Peter Kramper: NEW HOME. Corporate policy and corporate development in union housing and urban development 1950–1982. In: Vierteljahrschrift für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte , Volume 200. Franz Steiner, Stuttgart 2008, ISBN 978-3-515-09245-6 review .
  • Michael Mönninger: "New homes as the basic cells of a healthy state." Urban and residential construction in post-war modernism. The corporate publication Neue Heimat, monthly magazines 1954–1981. Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-86922-405-3 .
  • Ulrich Schwarz, Hartmut Frank (ed.): New home. The face of the Federal Republic. Buildings and projects 1947–1985 (series of publications by the Hamburg Architecture Archive 38), Dölling and Galitz, Hamburg 2019, ISBN 978-3-86218-112-4 .
  • Andres Lepik, Hilde Strobl (eds.): Die Neue Heimat (1950–1982). A social democratic utopia and its buildings , (exhibition catalog), De Gruyter 2019, ISBN 978-3-95553-476-9 .

Exhibitions

  • Die Neue Heimat (1950–1982). A social democratic utopia and its buildings. TU Munich , February 28 to May 19, 2019, followed by the Museum of Hamburg History , June 27 to October 6, 2019

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Ute Wiedemeyer: The scandal about the new home . Spiegel online - one day, June 23, 2019
  2. ↑ Well camouflaged in the thicket of companies - Neue Heimat: The dark businesses of Vietor and comrades . In: Der Spiegel . No. 32 , 1982, pp. 92-104 ( online ).
  3. ↑ Uwe Bahnsen: When the “New Home” suddenly looked very old , welt.de, February 6, 2017
  4. ^ The museum accompanying the exhibition