Myth and reality in national socialist town planning and architecture: Housing and urban development in Hamburg, 1933–45

Abstract

National Socialist town planning and architecture were forbidden subjects of study in Germany for a long time after the war. At the same time, the ideology and the reality of National Socialist housing policy and town planning were often confused, both consciously and unconsciously. In this article the authors show (a) that the ideologically‐based hatred of the large city was accompanied in practice by a further urbanization, (b) that the Greater Hamburg Law created a new agglomeration, (c) that the vaunted ‘urban rehabilitation’ in practice led to hardly any completed schemes, (d) that National Socialist public housing policy was more influenced by standard financial practice than by ‘Blut und Boden’ and other political slogans, and (e) that the townscape models offered no new qualities in comparison with those of the 1920s. The analysis of building and planning history in National Socialist Germany should therefore endeavour to be aware of ideology and reality in the forms in which they actually appeared and were expressed. If great care is not taken in this respect, the danger is that the theory and propaganda of National Socialism will be taken as the true history. Myths have already been created in this way, and in some respects they still persist.