We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 December 2007
This article analyses the ways the urban boundary and the landscapes beyond it were culturally conceived and physically manipulated in Munich between about 1890 and 1920. It highlights planning practice outside the ‘canon’ of planning history, showing the importance of localized decision-taking in urban design. The article explores cities as cultural constructs and material artefacts in Germany as part of a broader project linking planning history to broader historical investigation, and tries to bridge the gap between the ‘material’ city as a physical space, and the ‘cultural’ city of language and symbols.
1 Thomas, D., ‘The edge of the city’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 15 (1990), 131–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Barker, P., ‘Non-plan revisited: or, the real way cities grow’, Journal of Design History, 2 (1999), 95–110CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
2 A search of Urban History, Planning Perspectives and the Journal of Planning History reveals about 20 articles on the garden city in the last three years. Collections like K. Parsons' From Garden City to Green City: The Legacy of Ebenezer Howard (London, 2002) continue to assert the coherency of a ‘movement’, its singular importance in shaping the twentieth-century city and the ‘linear’ nature of the growth of the idea, as do: D. Schubert (ed.), Die Gartenstadtidee zwischen reaktionärer Ideologie und pragmatischer Umsetzung: Theodor Fritschs völkische Version der Gartenstadt (Dortmund, 2004); Ward, C. and Hall, P., Sociable Cities: The Legacy of Ebenezer Howard (Chichester, 1998)Google Scholar; Jost, H., Roter Faden ‘Gartenstadt’: Stadterweiterungsplanen von Howards garden city bis zur ‘neuen Vorstadt’ (Berlin, 1999)Google Scholar.
3 Some were, however, enthused by the writings of Camillo Sitte, and his book Der Städtebau nach seinen künstlerischen Grundsätzen (Vienna, 1889). Despite the work of Collins, G. and Collins, C. Crasemann (Camillo Sitte and the Birth of Modern City Planning (London, 1965))Google Scholar, it is only recently that Sitte's influence is receiving the historical attention it deserves. See: Mönninger, M., Vom Ornament zum Nationalkunstwerk. Zur Kunst- und Architekturtheorie Camillo Sittes (Braunschweig, 1998)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wilhelm, K. and Jessen-Klingenberg, D., Formationen der Stadt: Camillo Sitte weitergelesen (Berlin, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Klaus, Semsroth, Jormakka, K. and Langer, B. (eds.), Kunst des Städtebaus: Neue Perspektiven auf Camillo Sitte (Vienna, 2005)Google Scholar.
4 Abbott, C., ‘Urban history for planners’, Journal of Planning History, 4 (2006), 301–13CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
5 German municipal archives, university dissertations and historical associations are particularly prolific producers of excellent institutional and technical histories of Eingemeindungen and Stadterweiterungen. See, for example, Gruber-Corr, B., Stadterweiterung im Rheinland: Kommune, Bürger und Staat als Akteure im Entstehungsprozess der Bonner Südstadt, 1850–1890 (Bonn, 2004)Google Scholar; Mittag, J. and Wölk, I. (eds.), Bochum und das Ruhrgebiet: Großstadtbildung im 20. Jahrhundert (Essen, 2005)Google Scholar. On Munich, see Fisch, S., ‘Theodor Fischer in München (1893–1901) – der Stadtplaner auf dem Weg zum Beamten’, in Mai, E., Pohl, H. and Waetzold, S. (eds.), Kunstpolitik und Kunstförderung im Kaiserreich: Kunst im Wandel der Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte (Berlin, 1982), 245–59Google Scholar; idem, Stadtplanung im 19. Jahrhundert: Das Beispiel München bis zur Ära Theodor Fischer (Munich, 1988); idem, ‘Neue Aspekte der Münchener Stadtplanung zur Zeit Theodor Fischers (1893 bis 1901) im interurbanen Vergleich’, in Hardtwig, W. and Tenfelde, K. (eds.), Soziale Räume in der Urbanisierung: Studien zur Geschichte Münchens im Vergleich 1850–1933 (Munich, 1990), 175–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Nerdinger, W., Theodor Fischer: Architekt und Städtebauer, 1862–1938 (Berlin, 1988)Google Scholar. A good introduction to a case study in English of Eingemeindung opposed by the people to be incorporated is McElligott, A., Contested City: Municipal Politics and the Rise of Nazism in Altona, 1917–1937 (Ann Arbor, MI, 1998), 95–124CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
6 For an analysis of Glasgow's Kelvinside development in this regard, see Whitehand, J., ‘Building cycles and the spatial pattern of urban growth’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 56 (1972), 39–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a recent summary of the state of geography research on ‘fringe belts’, see Whitehand, J., ‘The fringe-belt phenomenon and socioeconomic change’, Urban Studies, 11 (2006), 2047–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
7 See, for example: Gunn, S. (ed.), Identities in Space: Contested Terrains in the Western City since 1850 (Aldershot, 2001)Google Scholar, or Gieryn, T., ‘What buildings do’, Theory and Society, 31 (2002), 35–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar; or McNamara, M., From Tavern to Courthouse: Architecture and Ritual in American Law, 1658–1860 (Baltimore, MD, 2004)Google Scholar.
8 It would be instinctive to turn to geographers to seek resolutions to this problem. However, post-modern geographers like Richard Soja have stressed the importance of ‘space’ in general, but have not succeeded in explaining specific spaces and places. See: Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and Other Real-and-Imagined Spaces (Oxford, 1996); Postmetropolis: Critical Studies of Cities and Regions (Oxford, 2000). His critics also struggle to assert the ‘real’. See Lees, L., ‘Urban geography: discourse analysis and urban research’, Progress in Human Geography, 1 (2004), 101–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, ‘Rematerializing geography: the “new” urban geography’, Progress in Human Geography, 1 (2002), 101–12; C. Philo, ‘More words, more worlds: reflections on the cultural turn in human geography’, in Cook, I., Crouch, I., Naylor, S. and Ryan, J. (eds.), Cultural Turns/Geographical Turns: Perspectives in Cultural Geography (Harlow, 2000), 26–53Google Scholar; Jackson, P., ‘Rematerializing social and cultural geography’, Social and Cultural Geography, 1 (2000), 9–14CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
9 A more ‘historicist’ approach reflecting a German culture ‘at home’ with modernity would be the essays on Germany in Umbach, M. and Hüppauf, B. (eds.), Vernacular Modernism: Heimat, Globalization, and the Built Environment (London, 2005)Google Scholar; Rieger, B., Technology and the Culture of Modernity in Britain and Germany, 1890–1945 (Cambridge, 2005)Google Scholar; Rohkrämer, T., Eine andere Moderne? Zivilisationskritik, Natur und Technik in Deutschland, 1880–1933 (Paderborn, 1999)Google Scholar; Repp, K., Reformers, Critics, and the Paths of German Modernity: Anti-Politics and the Search for Alternatives, 1890–1914 (London, 2000)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jennifer Jenkins, Provincial Modernity: Local Culture and Liberal Politics in Fin-de-Siècle Hamburg (Ithaca, NY, 2003).
10 There has been a tendency towards emphasizing the homogeneity of the expert class's approach to the world ranging from Weber's investigations in the early twentieth century to recent debates about the universalism of governmentality. See, for example, Scott, J., Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (London, 1999)Google Scholar; Rodgers, D., Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age (London, 1998)Google Scholar.
11 Fisch, Stadtplanung im 19. Jahrhundert; E. Voglmaier, ‘Hans Grässel: Architekt und städtischer Baubeamter in München’, unpublished doctoral dissertation, Technische Universität München, 1992, 24.
12 Sitzung der weiteren städtischen Wohnungskommission, 4 Nov. 1908. Stadtarchiv München(SAM)-Wohnungsamt(WA)-23.
13 Gerhard, Fehl, Kleinstadt, Steildach, Volksgemeinschaft: zum reaktionären Modernismus in Bau- und Stadtbaukunst (Braunschweig, 1995), 112Google Scholar.
14 Strohmeyer, K., James Hobrecht (1825–1902) und die Modernisierung der Stadt (Berlin, 2000), 43–74Google Scholar.
15 See, for example, the work of Werner Hegemann. Collins, C. Crasemann, Werner Hegemann and the Search for Universal Urbanism (London, 2005), 32–80Google Scholar.
16 Which attracted substantial admiration from British observers, who felt crippled by the ‘small state’ in Britain: Lunn, H. Simpson, Municipal Lessons from Southern Germany (London, 1908)Google Scholar; Dawson, W. Harbutt, Municipal Life and Government in Germany (London, 1914)Google Scholar.
17 Palmowski, J., Urban Liberalism in Imperial Germany: Frankfurt-am-Main, 1866–1914 (Oxford, 1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Steinborn, P., Grundlagen und Grundzüge Münchener Kommunalpolitik in den Jahren der Weimarer Republik: Zur Geschichte der bayerischen Landeshauptstadt im 20. Jahrhundert (Munich, 1968), 35–59Google Scholar.
18 Heisler, A., Stadt und Boden: Zur Stadterweiterungsdiskussion der Jahrhundertwende und den Grunstücksverhältnissen in München, 1860–1910 (Munich, 1994)Google Scholar; Böhm, H., ‘Stadtplanung und Städtische Bodenpolitik’, in Blotevogel, H.-H. (ed.), Kommunale Leistungsverwaltung und Stadtentwicklung vom Vormärz bis zur Weimarer Republik (Cologne, 1990), 139–57Google Scholar.
19 Sitzung der weiteren städtischen Wohnungskommission, 4 Nov. 1908. SAM-WA-23.
20 Evidenced in the Zweckverband Groß-Berlin in 1912, which led to the full creation of Groß-Berlin in 1920 (Crasemann Collins, Werner Hagemann, 68–81).
21 Feuchter-Schawelka, A., ‘Siedlungs- und Landkommunebewegung’, in Krebs, D. and Reulecke, J. (eds.), Handbuch der deutschen Reformbewegungen, 1880–1933 (Wuppertal, 1998)Google Scholar; Judith, Baumgartner, ‘Die Anfänge der Ostbau-Kolonie “Eden” in Oranienburg, 1893–1914’, Zeitschrift für Unternehmensgeschichte, 3 (1990), 154–65Google Scholar; Nina Lübbren, Rural Artists' Colonies in Europe, 1870–1910 (Manchester, 2001).
22 Programm für den Neubau eines Gaswerkes in München, 1903. SAM-Gaswerke(GW)-278.
23 Ries to the Stadtbauamt and Stadterweiterungsbüro, 19 Apr. 1904. SAM-GW-278.
24 Megele, M., Baugeschichtlicher Atlas der Landeshauptstadt München (Munich, 1951), 47Google Scholar.
25 Hatuka, T. and Kallus, R., ‘Loose ends: the role of architecture in construction urban borders in Tel Aviv-Jaffa since the 1920s’, Planning Perspectives, 21 (2006), 23–44 (24)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
26 Direktion der städt. Gasanstalt, ‘Städtische Gasanstalt München. Gaswerk bei Moosach’, 31 Dec. 1903; Bertsch to Schwiening, 8 Feb. 1904. SAM-GW-278.
27 Ries and Hollweck, städtische Gasanstalt to Referat Xa, 17 Jun. 1903. SAM-GW-278.
28 Städt. Gasanstalt, Zeichnung C, No. 2, ‘Städtische Gasanstalt München. Gasbehälter nach Osten gelegt’, Dec. 1903; Sitzung vom 11. Febr., signed Schwiening, Bertsch; Grässel, Bertsch and Schwiening to the Direktion der städt. Gasanstalt, 26 Apr. 1904; Bertsch to Schwiening, 8 Feb. 1904. SAM-GW-278.
29 Mosse, G., ‘National cemeteries and national revival: the cult of the fallen soldiers in Germany’, Journal of Contemporary History, 14 (1979), 1–20 (13)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Indeed, this association of nature and the ‘extra-urban’ with cemeteries was central to the corporation's thinking; Linhof, R., ‘Die Kultur der Münchner Friedhofs-Anlagen’, Wasmuths Monatsheft für Baukunst, 3 (1918–19), 200–10Google Scholar.
30 Ries and Hollweck to Referat Xa and Verwaltungsreferat Lipp, 8 Jun. 1904. SAM-GW-278.
31 Bertsch to Schwiening, 8 Feb. 1904. SAM-GW-278.
32 Grässel, ‘Ästhetik des Schulhauses’, 4–5. SAM-Nachlass Grässel(NLG)-367.
33 ‘Ein neues Münchener Schulhaus’, Das Schulhaus, 7. Jg, nr. 11 [no date], 403–14. SAM-NLG-367.
34 Ibid.
35 Zimmermann, C. and Reulecke, J. (eds.), Die Stadt als Moloch? Das Land als Kraftquell? Wahrnehmungen und Wirkungen der Großstädte um 1900 (Berlin, 1999)Google Scholar.
36 Waterhouse, A., Boundaries of the City: The Architecture of Western Urbanism (London, 1993), 246–98Google Scholar.
37 See the many cuttings in the file, ‘Krupp'sche Grundstückankäufe’. SAM-NLG-400.
38 ‘Ein Rundgang im künftigen Münchner Krupp-Gebiet’, Münchner Neueste Nachrichten, 20 May 1916. SAM-NLG-400.
39 Ibid.
40 Ibid..
41 ‘Das Krupp-Project und das Münchener Stadtbild’, Münchner Neueste Nachrichten, 10 Jun. 1916. SAM-NLG-400.
42 Ibid.
43 There were many articles pursuing a similar theme from a variety of Munich papers, often with no date or attribution, in SAM-NLG-400.
44 Davis, B., Home Fires Burning: Food, Politics, and Everyday Life in World War One Berlin (London, 2000), 48–56Google Scholar; Healy, M., Vienna and the Collapse of the Habsburg Empire (Cambridge, 2004), 55–60Google Scholar. Contrast this with the rhetorical appeal to pastoral imagery in war and post-war British politics (Miller, S., ‘Urban dreams and rural reality: land and landscape in English culture, 1920–1945’, Rural History, 1 (1995), 89–102CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Trentmann, F., ‘Civilization and its discontents: English neo-Romanticism and the transformation of anti-Modernism in twentieth-century Western culture’, Journal of Contemporary History, 4 (1994), 583–625)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
45 Hong, Y.-S., ‘Neither singular nor alternative: narratives of modernity and welfare in Germany, 1870–1945’, Social History, 2 (2005), 133–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dickinson, E.R., ‘Biopolitics, fascism, democracy: some reflections on our discourse about “modernity”’, Central European History, 1 (2004), 1–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
