The Waldstadt in Context: Housing Policy in the DDR
Following the Second World War, there was an acute housing shortage that affected both the capitalist West and Socialist East Germany. In the GDR, housing policy can be grouped into two distinct eras.
(Image Source: MDR/Imago, Frontalvision.com)
The first major housing policy response took the form of the 1949-50 two-year plan. This policy drive had two complementary aims: the first was a pragmatic response to a housing crisis, focussing on the reconstruction of the destroyed inner-city urban fabric in order to re-house displaced people and replenish the housing stock. The second aim was ideological and symbolic: housing was a way to demonstrate the superiority of socialist society by building ‘palaces’ for the common people that united all (previously divided) segments of society. Much of this housing followed Stalinist architectural principles with classical ornaments and unique details, best exemplified by the public housing constructed on Berlin’s Stalinallee (later renamed as Karl-Marx Allee, see image below). Housing from this era aimed to provide high-quality, luxurious housing developments for the working class with all modern amenities, yet was highly time-intensive and hard to replicate at the scale required in post-war East Germany. (Image Source: MDR/Imago, Frontalvision.com)
Following the death of Stalin, Soviet housing policy underwent a dramatic shift away from what Khrushchev described as the “beautiful silhouettes” (Gerchuk 2000) in the Stalinist style towards producing comfortable mass housing for all as fast and as cheaply as possible, quickly nicknamed ‘Khrushchyovkas’. This was made possible through the development of new construction techniques, including prefabricated concrete blocks that could easily be assembled on site and replicated quickly across the Soviet Union. This rationalisation of housing policy sought to embody a vision of a ‘classless’ society governed by rational, scientific principles. In the GDR, this policy was quickly adopted through the building of new model cities and housing estates in the new centres of industrial production.
(The construction of Hoyerswerda, 1958. Image Source: Bundesarchiv Bild 183-58152-0002; photo by Rudolf Hesse)
The first examples of this were Eisenhüttenstadt (formerly Stalinstadt) in Brandenburg, begun in 1950 to house employees of the local steel industry, and Hoyerswerda (Saxony), begun in 1955 for workers of the coal industry. For the planning authorities of these new socialist cities, Khrushchev’s housing developments were a way to stand in opposition to capitalist city development in West Germany, which was marked by private ownership of housing (‘Einfamilienhäuser’), class segregation and higher prices. In contrast, the socialist ‘Plattenbau’ constructions were owned and administered communally. In addition, they were consciously developed in previously empty peripheral locations as a symbol of ‘the new society’ away from the historical centres, which in turn would be left to decay. These estates were designed to cater for all the needs of the inhabitants: within a short distance, there would be public schools, green spaces, local shops, doctors’ practices as well as other amenities including cheap public transport to work places. To further contrast with the capitalist West, rents were kept affordable through high-level estate subsidies (5% of average income compared to 18% in West Germany).
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Following the initial burst of building activity in the 1950s and 60s, the economic focus started to move away from housing towards industrial production. As a result, investment in housing suffered: waiting lists for public housing grew longer; the quality and maintenance of the housing stock declined. During this time, the ‘Plattenbau’ estates came under a surprising amount of public scrutiny and started to be associated with images of monotony, greyness and a poor quality of life.
Straße der Republik in Eisenhüttenstadt. Image source: Foto: Walter Fricke / Museum Utopie und Alltag)
This criticism was first publicly articulated by Deutsche Architektur’s editor-in-chief Bruno Flierl in 1964, who, in his essay “Hoyerswerda and the Development of Socialist Life”, stated that poorly maintained public housing undermined public confidence in the Socialist political cause and would lead to political upheaval. Flierl specifically criticised the limited amount of social and cultural facilities and the purposeful disconnection between the peripheral locations of these estates and the existing urban centre.
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This growing dissatisfaction led to a policy response in 1971 under the heading "To Solve the Accommodation Problem as a Social Question by 1990”. Whilst this new policy led to greater numbers of housing in large urban centres, most of these remained focused in peripheral locations and, with notable exceptions (e.g. Weimar’s Waldstadt), ignored smaller towns and cities.
Yet as early as 1982, the Politburo of the DDR announced that there would be a halt to all new peripheral mass housing developments. Instead, the focus would shift towards inner-city housing integrated into the existing urban fabric. Despite this apparent desire to change direction, economic concerns around the cost of traditional building materials and lack of expertise meant that this policy change was never realised:
[t]here were barely enough construction firms left that could execute traditional construction. Plattenbauten were therefore continuously built until the end of the GDR in 1989-90. (Urban 2012: 4)
Sources
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Grundsätze für die sozialistische Entwicklung von Städtebau und Architektur in der DDR, minutes of the Politburo meeting on May 18, 1982, final copy, Berlin Federal Archive DY 30/J IV 2/2 1947: 238.
Iurii Gerchuk. (2000). The Aesthetics of Everyday Life in the Khrushchev Thaw in the USSR (1954–64). In: in Style and Socialism: Modernity and Material Culture in Post-War Eastern Europe, ed. Susan Emily Reid and David Crowley (New York: Berg), 82–83.
Pugh, E. (2015). From “National Style” to “Rationalized Construction”: Mass-Produced Housing, Style, and Architectural Discourse in the East German Journal Deutsche Architektur, 1956–1964. In: Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians , Vol. 74, No. 1 (March 2015). 87-108.