Westerhüsen settlement
The Westerhüsen settlement is a residential area in the north-western part of the Magdeburg district of Westerhüsen .
Architecture and history
planning
The approximately 15 to 17 hectare settlement was essentially built between 1926 and 1938 on a largely undeveloped field west of the Magdeburg Südost train station in close proximity to the industrial settlements further east on the Elbe , of which Fahlberg-List was the most important. In addition to the proximity to the workplaces, the presence of the train station and the easy accessibility of the tram route already a little further to the east spoke in favor of choosing the area as a location for a larger housing estate. The planning, which began in 1915, took place against the background of an intended large-scale urban expansion to the south. In the district of Westerhüsen, a district in the southeast of Magdeburg, new settlements would have been required to close the gap and include Schönebeck (Elbe) on an even larger scale. It was assumed that Magdeburg's population would double to around 500,000. With the development of the industrial areas in the north of the city, with the port facilities being built there, the Mittelland Canal and the motorway , the urban development shifted, so that a continuation of the settlement construction in Westerhüsen was discontinued and the scenic location in the vicinity of rural areas was preserved.
Despite the dense chronological sequence of construction activities, a wide variety of architectural styles were used. There are also a few buildings from the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. In addition to the Magdeburg Südost train station and some buildings that were originally isolated on the northern side of Welsleber Straße, the Cafe Kies is particularly worth mentioning. At first, to the south-west, even further in the open field, the considerably smaller settlement Arnold-Knoblauch-Straße was built.
In 1924/25, paving and sewerage work was carried out in Welsleber and Holsteiner Strasse, which was already provided for in the 1910 incorporation agreement with the Westerhüsen district of Magdeburg. The settlement association Neue Heimat eGmbH had acquired six hectares of land on Welsleber Strasse. A development plan for the area between Welsleber and Holsteiner Strasse was established in February 1926. Here, today's Weimarer Strasse was registered with eight meter wide front gardens and intended as a connecting road between the Westerhüsen cemetery further south and Metzer Strasse , which belongs to Salbke , to the north, today's Blumenberger Strasse , with other cooperatives also participating. The construction management was the responsibility of the Neue Heimat settlement association, which operated in conjunction with the Mitteldeutsche Heimstätte eGmbH .
Start of construction in Gothaer Straße
The first part of the settlement was the development of Gothaer Strasse in 1926 by the settlement cooperative of the Reich Association of War Victims, War Participants and War survivors . As is the case with Geraer Straße, the course of the road is based on the course of a contour line of the terrain rising in a north-westerly direction. In continuation of the construction method used in the Arnold-Knoblauch-Straße estate, semi-detached houses with a semicircular Zollinger roof were created . However, the work was increasingly carried out by professional construction companies. The eaves side of the houses facing the street are connected by flat-roofed extensions, so that, unlike on Arnold-Knoblauch-Straße, a closed development was created. Single-family houses with the gable facing the street complete the development. The housing association also built the houses on the south side of Welsleber Strasse between Weimarer and Jenaer Strasse in the same way. The houses on Gothaer Strasse were often sold relatively soon after they were built. In addition to war victims, civil servants and higher-level employees were among the residents of the houses. Overall, civil servants and employees were rather underrepresented in the Westerhüsen settlement compared to other similar settlements.
In the period from 1926 to 1928, two-story apartment buildings with gable roofs were built on Weimarer Strasse and on the south side of Welsleber Strasse . The architecture of these buildings appears conservative. The structure of the facade was originally characterized by a uniform division of the window bars, which is no longer available today. The first residents of Weimarer Strasse were mainly skilled workers and employees, including senior employees.
Construction section Jenaer Straße
Also in Jena street and in the Coburg Road construction work began in 1926. However, the architectural style is fundamentally different from the other phases, although the Siedlungsgenossenschaft of Reichsbund also worked here. Closed, two-story, flat-roofed rows of houses were created in the architectural language of the New Building of the 1920s. The facade is structured by flat bands of clinker bricks that separate the individual houses from one another. Other design elements, such as windows that are color-coded from the light plaster of the facade, are no longer preserved. On the side facing away from the street, the houses each had a small stable facing the garden, the roof of which also serves as a terrace for the upper floor. These houses were designed by Konrad Rühl and Gerhard Gauger . The rapid beam ceiling process was used as a new production technique . Reinforced concrete beams manufactured on site for the basement and storey ceilings were inserted using a mobile, rail-mounted crane. In this way, the usual wooden beams were not used. The beams were clamped into the load-bearing transverse walls. To reduce weight, there were cavities in the middle part of the beams. The houses are each six meters wide. The basement and load-bearing transverse walls were built from larger stones. The planning of the houses also included details of the interior design. A built-in wardrobe was planned in the area between the living room and the porch .
The visual effect of this ensemble is based on the uniform design, which however only persists to a limited extent in the course of use according to the individual requirements of the residents. The first users were war invalids or widows of fallen soldiers. In addition, more skilled workers were also among the settlers.
Also in the New Building style, the houses at Holsteiner Strasse 2-6 were built in 1927 and Gothaer Strasse 2 in 1930 . The listed buildings each have two and a half to three floors and have a flat roof. The façades of the houses resting on a clinker base are plastered. The buildings are located on a slight slope. The cubic structures are staggered. The facade is structured by loggias and balconies. The windows are conspicuously flush with the facade and were originally in color contrasted with the facade plaster.
In May 1929 preparations were made for an expansion of the settlement to the south. Welsleber and Weimarer Strasse were to be extended to Wartburgstrasse. The latter, however, was never implemented. In addition, a parallel street was planned south of Jenaer Straße. Koburger Strasse was then designated as the southern parallel street in May 1931. A connecting road between Welsleber Straße and today's Geraer Straße, which was originally planned, was canceled in order to reduce the financial burden for Neue Heimat . A pedestrian connection has been maintained at this point to this day. The original name of this street, which was no longer implemented, was to be Saalfelder Straße and was later used for a smaller street in the settlement.
Also in 1930 the architecturally very simple and equipped with relatively small three-room apartments were built at Geraer Strasse 4–10 and in 1931 the buildings Geraer Strasse 9–17 on the south side . Mitteldeutsche Heimstätte and Neue Heimat now acted together under the umbrella of the Magdeburg Association for Small Housing, founded in 1919. From 1931 onwards, the funding situation became more difficult due to the reduction in subsidies previously granted for the provision of affordable housing.
Construction progress from 1933
In the time of National Socialism , building was only continued to a small extent. In 1933/34, single-storey semi-detached houses were built in the northern part of Mühlhäuser Strasse according to plans by the architect J. Hotz . The buildings in Ilmenauer Strasse designed by FW Ferdinand Müller followed in 1934/35. In the period 1936/37, the northern development of Geraer Straße was completed, with the architect J. Arnold taking over the design of the 1930 houses. The houses on Geraer Strasse were used by higher officials and employees. In 1938 the very simply built single-storey single-family houses with a gable roof were built in the eastern part of Geraer Straße . Another row of houses was built in the second row behind a building directly on the street. An engine and screw factory has been located in this area since 1899, with the extension of the property at Holsteiner Straße 10, on which the Fischersche Villa still stands today . During the First World War it served as a grenade turning shop and employed 125 people. After the factory was closed in 1927, the city of Magdeburg acquired the area in 1929 and demolished almost all of the buildings in 1933 so that the area could serve as a small house settlement for homeless people and large families. As the last major measure of this time, the three-story apartment buildings were built on the northeast side of Holsteiner Strasse in the same year . They each have a hipped roof and close the gap to Magdeburg Südost train station. At the same time, they shield the settlement from the Magdeburg – Leipzig railway line .
It was not until 1960 that a larger building project began again in which the north side of Welsleber Strasse was built with relatively large three or four-story apartment buildings. As the successor to the Neue Heimat settlement association, the Südost housing cooperative was active in the settlement , but it filed for bankruptcy at the beginning of the 21st century. While the buildings in Gothaer Strasse, Ilmenauer Strasse, Mühlhäuser Strasse and parts of Welsleber Strasse were partly privately owned from the beginning or shortly after their completion, the buildings on Jenaer Strasse, Koburger Strasse, the western Geraer Strasse and the northern one remained Geraer Strasse and large parts of Welsleber Strasse are owned by the cooperatives or their legal successors. The buildings in the eastern part of Geraer Strasse were privatized after the Second World War .
At the beginning of the 21st century, the buildings on the north side of Geraer Strasse were demolished again. A new building is intended.
Store usage
There are only a few shops in the housing estate, some of them are empty today. In the vicinity of the train station there is the "Eis-Eck", an ice cream parlor frequented beyond the settlement . There has also been a bakery and hairdresser there since 2012. In addition to a nursery, there was also a small grocery store on Welsleber Strasse, which closed in 2012. A butcher, tobacco shop and a hot ironer were also on site until the 1990s .
Personalities
At least at the end of the 1930s and the beginning of the 1950s, the later SED politician Hugo Baumgart (1906–1987) lived at Welsleber Strasse 168.
literature
- Marta Doehler, Iris Reuther : Settlement development in Westerhüsen Magdeburg southeast , state capital Magdeburg 1995: PDF 1 , PDF 2 , PDF 3 , PDF 4 .
- Ute Kraft in Magdeburg - architecture and urban development , Janos Stekovics publishing house , Halle an der Saale 2001, ISBN 3-929330-33-4 , page 296
Individual evidence
- ↑ Monument Directory Saxony-Anhalt, Volume 14, State Capital Magdeburg , State Office for Monument Preservation and Archeology Saxony-Anhalt, Michael Imhof Verlag Petersberg 2009, ISBN 978-3-86568-531-5 , page 224
Coordinates: 52 ° 4 ′ 3.1 ″ N , 11 ° 39 ′ 54.7 ″ E