Shelter from the Storm: Politics, Production and the Housing Crisis in the Ruhr Coal Fields, 1918–24

Abstract

Apart from an adequate food supply, the most pressing of Germany's social problems following its defeat in 1918 was adequate housing, especially for its lower classes. The crush of soldiers pouring back from the front, the bursting dam of delayed new marriages and family formation due to the war, and the ravenous manpower needs of German industry in the face of the postwar economic crisis strained Germany's existing housing stock to the limit.1 This was especially true in the Ruhr industrial region. Yet housing was not just a social problem. It became tied to the postwar conflicts between organized labour and large industrial interests, especially in the Ruhr coal region. As social and economic conditions worsened in the aftermath of the war, housing developed into a severe political problem. In the years immediately after the war, Germany was beset by social and political unrest and near revolution. A provisional Social Democratic regime in Berlin struggled to draw a balance between syndicalist movements of Workers' and Soldiers' Councils, right-wing paramilitary threats, and the Spartakus communists. In the Ruhr, as elsewhere, conflicts arose around the issues of a shorter work shift, higher wages, industrial abuse of authority, and how best to nationalize the coal industry.2 Yet most of the working and middle classes simply sought to solve the basic everyday problems of food, shelter and