In praise of poverty: the middle-class dwelling and asceticism in early twentieth-century Germany

Abstract

This article examines the evolution of architectural asceticism in the capitalist economy by focusing on the middle-class dwelling in early twentieth-century Germany. It starts with an analysis of the concept of poverty in bourgeois imagination and how this concept played out in the Wilhelmine middle-class dwelling. Then the Wilhelmine design reform and the debate around the architect Heinrich Tessenow's austere architecture in the years leading up to the First World War are analysed to indicate how middle-class attitudes to poverty were changing. The final part focuses on the transformation of the ascetic discourse in architecture in the years of austerity during the war and its aftermath.