The city crown by bruno taut

Surrounding the facsimile format, we have added an introduction entitled “Advancing the reverie of utopia,” which critically examines the professional and intellectual developments leadi

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The CiTy Crown by bruno TauT

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ashgate Studies in architecture Seriesseries editor: eamonn canniffe, manchester school of architecture,

manchester metropolitan university, ukThe discipline of architecture is undergoing subtle transformation as design awareness permeates our visually dominated culture Technological change, the search for sustainability and debates around the value of place and meaning

of the architectural gesture are aspects which will affect the cities we inhabit This series seeks to address such topics, both theoretically and in practice, through the publication of high quality original research, written and visual

other titles in this series

From Formalism to Weak Form: The architecture

and Philosophy of Peter Eisenman

Stefano CorboISbn 978 1 4724 4314 4Suspending Modernity: The architecture of Franco albini

Kay Bea Jones

ISbn 978 1 4724 2728 1The architecture of IndustryChanging Paradigms in Industrial building and Planning

edited by Mathew Aitchison

ISbn 978 1 4724 3299 5architecture in an age of uncertainty

edited by Benjamin Flowers

ISbn 978 1 4094 4575 3Charles robert Cockerell, architect in Timereflections around anachronistic Drawings

Anne Bordeleau

ISbn 978 1 4094 5369 7

Forthcoming titles in this series

In-between: architectural Drawing and Imaginative Knowledge

in Islamic and Western Traditions

hooman Koliji

ISbn 978 1 4724 3868 3Phenomenologies of the CityStudies in the History and Philosophy of architecture

edited by henriette Steiner and Maximilian Sternberg

ISbn 978 1 4094 5479 3

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The City Crown by bruno Taut

Translated and Edited by

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all rights reserved no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.Matthew Mindrup and ulrike altenmüller-Lewis have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents act, 1988, to be identified as the editors of this work

England

www.ashgate.com

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

a catalogue record for this book is available from the british Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The city crown by bruno Taut / [translated and edited] by Matthew Mindrup and ulrike altenmüller-Lewis

pages cm (ashgate studies in architecture)

Includes bibliographical references and index

ISbn 978-1-4724-2199-9 (hbk) ISbn 978-1-4724-2200-2 (ebook)

ISbn 978-1-4724-2201-9 (epub) 1 City planning History I Taut, bruno, 1880-1938

II baron, Erich III behne, adolf, 1885-1948 IV Scheerbart, Paul, 1863-1915 V

Mindrup, Matthew editor VI altenmüller-Lewis, ulrike, 1971- editor VII Taut, bruno, 1880-1938 Stadtkrone English

ISbn 9781472422019 (ebk – ePub)

Printed in the united Kingdom by Henry Ling Limited,

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Bruno Taut

erich Baron

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ThE CITy Crown By BRUNO TAUT

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List of Illustrations

Black and White Illustrations

1.1 Ebenezer Howard, “Garden City,” Image

no 2 of Howard, To-morrow: A Peaceful Path

to real reform, 1898 © Town & Country

Planning Association.

1.2 Bruno Taut, Stadtschema (City

Diagram), in Die Stadtkrone, 1917.

1.3 Bruno Taut, Das Glashaus (The Glashaus)

at the 1914 Kölner werkbund–Ausstellung

(1914 Cologne Werkbund Exhibition), 1914.

1.4 Bruno Taut, haus Der Freundschaft

in Konstantinople (House of Friendship in

Constantinople), 1916.

1.5 Bruno Taut, Das Kristallhaus (The

Crystal Building), Sheet 3 of Bruno Taut,

Alpine Architecture, 1917.

Original Illustrations

Figure 1 St Barbara by Jan van Eyck.

Figure 2 Charles Cottet, City Image.

Figure 10 Assyrian Temple, reconstruction Figure 11 Madurai, Great Gopura Figure 12 Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem, reconstruction.

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THe CiTy CRoWn BY BrUno TAUT

viii

Figure 23 Angkor Wat.

Figure 24 Cairo.

Figure 25 Hebron in Palestine.

Figure 26 Moscow Great Cathedral in the

Figure 41 Chidambaram, Shiva-Pond.

Figure 42 City crown, east elevation.

Figure 43 City crown, west elevation.

Figure 44 City crown, bird’s eye view

looking west.

Figure 45 City skyline.

Figure 46 City plan diagram.

Figure 47 City crown, image.

Figure 48 City crown, plan and elevation Figure 49 City crown, perspectival view Figure 50 Garden City Estate Falkenberg near Berlin.

Figure 51 Street views from Falkenberg Figure 52 Design of a votive church by Schinkel.

Figure 53 Design for a monument of Friedrich the Great on the Leipziger Platz in Berlin by Gilly.

Figure 54 Karlsruhe, city plan.

Figure 55 Temple of Confucius in Qufu Figure 56 Plan diagram from Howard Figure 57 City center of Letchworth Figure 58 Plan of the city of Qufu Figure 59 Augsburg, Elias Hollplatz Figure 60 Municipal building for new York Figure 61 new York, city skyline.

Figure 62 XXII District in Vienna.

Figure 63 Project for Klein-Hoheim Figure 64 Plan for an Australian capital city Figure 65 Project for an International World Center.

Figure 66 Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Berlin.

Figure 67 Palace of Justice in Brussels Figure 68 The Capitol in Washington Figure 69 Design of a Monument for the People by Berlage.

Figure 70 Cathedral in rouen.

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Figure 71 Palitana, the Great Temple

Chamukte.

Figure 72 The Great Pagoda of Udaipur.

Colour Plates

1 Bruno Taut, Wohnstadt Carl Legien,

Berlin-Prenzlauer Berg, 1928–30 Loggias

at housing block Photo: Laura J Padgett,

January 2009.

Berlin-Prenzlauer Berg, 1928–30 Housing block

Sültstraße Photo: Laura J Padgett, April 2009.

Berlin-Prenzlauer Berg, 1928–30 Housing

block Sültstraße Courtyard elevation and

corner balconies Photo: Laura J Padgett,

January 2009.

block Sültstraße Courtyard elevation

Photo: Laura J Padgett, January 2009.

block Sültstraße Staircase Photo: Laura J

Padgett, April 2009.

6 Single family row houses, north of

Argentinische Allee reconstruction of the

color plan by Bruno Taut illustrating results

of the color analysis Photo of drawing:

Helge Pitz, Architekturwerkstatt Helge Pitz –

Winfried Brenne, 1976/1977.

7 Bruno Taut, Waldsiedlung onkel Toms

Hütte, Berlin-Zehlendorf, 1926–31 Single

family row houses, north of Argentinische

Allee Terraces with glass roof along the

garden façade Illustrating results of the

color analysis Photo of drawing: Helge Pitz,

Architekturwerkstatt Helge Pitz – Winfried

Brenne, 1976/1977.

8 Bruno Taut, Waldsiedlung onkel Toms Hütte, Berlin-Zehlendorf, 1926–31 Single family row houses, north of Argentinische Allee Illustrating the results of the color analysis Photo of drawing: Helge Pitz, Architekturwerkstatt Helge Pitz – Winfried Brenne, 1976/1977.

9 Bruno Taut, Waldsiedlung onkel Toms Hütte, Berlin-Zehlendorf, 1926–31 Yard at Birkenhof Landscape reminiscent of Taut’s early pastel drawings from nature Photo: Laura J Padgett, September 2008.

10 Bruno Taut, Waldsiedlung onkel Toms Hütte, Berlin-Zehlendorf, 1926–31 Photo: Laura J Padgett, September 2008.

11 Bruno Taut, Waldsiedlung onkel Toms Hütte, Berlin-Zehlendorf, 1926–31 Apartment building Waldhüterpfad View from stairhall Photo: Laura J Padgett, September 2008.

12 Bruno Taut, Waldsiedlung onkel Toms Hütte, Berlin-Zehlendorf, 1926–31 Corner Hochsitzweg and Hochwildpfad Photo: Laura J Padgett, September 2008.

13 Bruno Taut, Waldsiedlung onkel Toms Hütte, Berlin-Zehlendorf, 1926–31 Am Wiesenblau Garden facades Photo: Laura J Padgett, September 2009.

14 Bruno Taut, Waldsiedlung onkel Toms Hütte, Berlin-Zehlendorf, 1926–31 Photo: Laura J Padgett, September 2008.

15 rudolf Steiner, Goetheanum, Dornach, Switzerland Built in poured concrete from 1925–8 Photo: Mark Brack, 1989.

16 James Turrell, “Twilight Epiphany” skyspace at rice University, Houston, Texas,

2012 Photo: Florian Holzherr, 2012.

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Translators’ Preface

Translations of historical texts are by their very nature always a balancing act between historical accuracy, linguistic beauty and an interpretation of the author’s original intent The works included in this book are certainly no exception Written

under the influence of the First World War, the texts included in Die Stadtkrone

represent the hopes and longings of three individuals, Eric Baron, Adolf Behne and Bruno Taut, for a new utopian society made possible by architecture In three different voices and three different approaches, Baron, Behne and Taut reason for the viability of creating a new garden city where people can live and work in peace and community underneath the shadow of a single, purpose-free glass structure,

a city crown Shortly after the abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II on November 9, 1918, the First World War came to an end and a handful of artists and architects joined

Taut in forming the Arbeitsrat für Kunst (Working Council for Art) to work with the new socialist government to help forge the cultural politics of the new country Die Stadtkrone was, for Taut as well as for his friends in the Arbeitsrat für Kunst, Adolf

Behne and Walter Gropius, used as a starting point for developing the goals of their new council Later it was a guideline for Taut’s “Ein Architektur-Programm” (“An

Architecture Programme”) from Christmas of the same year and Gropius’ Bauhaus Manifesto of April 1919 So it is surprising that after its publication in 1919, such an

important work in the development of modern architecture, urban planning and architectural education has never been translated into English

Taut is still considered one of the most influential architects of the modern movement and his writings had an undeniable impact on the early twentieth-

century architectural culture For English-speaking audiences, Taut’s Die Stadtkrone

is a staple of any discussion surrounding the garden city movement, utopianism, Expressionist or early modern architectural history – all the more reason for our surprise that the anthology had yet to be translated into English There have been fragments of the anthology’s different texts translated in the literature on Taut and early modern architectural history but never a complete rendition of

the anthology’s arguments in their entirety It was only in 2009 that the Journal of

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The CiTy Crown By BruNo TAuT

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Architectural education solicited us to produce the first English translation of Taut’s

title essay, “The City Crown.”

Translations not only require a fluency in the original and translated languages

but also a deep knowledge of the context in time – in the case of Die Stadtkrone, this

includes the historical, cultural, social and political background in which the authors conceived their texts and in which today’s audience will read it As historical texts, which usually come with antiquated phrasing and expressions that are no longer in active use, the challenge of this translation was to find appropriate English words and syntax that, while accurately describing the context of the German, also mirror the idiosyncrasy of each author’s voice and field of study When confronted by difficult or unclear phrasing, we made every effort to retain the voice and the intent

of the author, adding footnotes to justify our interpretation of the text Similarly,

we sought to add important references to clarify an author’s citation of a work or concept that was either ambiguous or, at times, inaccurate

The texts and images in this translation are organized to retain the original format of the book – a composition of layers intended to guide the reader to understand the efficacy of his city crown proposal At the outermost layer of the facsimile, the reader encounters two poems from Paul Scheerbart: at the beginning

is the poem “Das neue Leben” (“The New Life”) and the end with the short poem

“Der tote Palast” (“The Dead Palace”) After having set the poetic tone of the volume with these works, Taut includes 40 examples of historical city crowns to prepare the reader for the subject matter and argue for the necessity of his urban scheme His title essay then references these images to justify the need for a new city crown that

he includes in his urban scheme, a completely conceived garden city accompanied

by drawings and images Immediately following an explanation of the costs, Taut’s

section “Neuer Versuch zu Stadtbekrönungen” seeks to substantiate its validity in

contemporary architectural practice with additional examples of contemporary city crowns under the title “Aufbau”, Eric Baron’s essay then encourages the edification

of socialism after the end of the First World War through art and architecture Adolf Behne concludes by elaborating on Baron’s concept by tracing the decline

of art since the Gothic and prophesizes a “Wiederkehr der Baukunst” (“rebirth of Architecture”) through the cooperation of the arts under architecture

Surrounding the facsimile format, we have added an introduction entitled

“Advancing the reverie of utopia,” which critically examines the professional and intellectual developments leading to and underpinning Taut’s proposal to advance the English garden city concept with a centralized communal structure

of glass, a city crown The afterword, “The City Crown in the Context of Bruno Taut’s oeuvre,” sets Taut’s Die Stadtkrone in the context of his overall oeuvre, reviewing

the reception of the book at the time of its publication and the impact it had both outside of Taut’s work and for his own career As a work, we hope this first English translation of Taut’s seminal anthology will become a critical text in architectural studies on the history of European Modernism, urban design theory and Taut’s oeuvre in general

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This English translation of Bruno Taut’s Die Stadtkrone is a work that has been many

years in the making We would like to thank first of all George Dodds, who expressed

interest in this project as chief editor of Journal of Architectural education in 2006

and commissioned our translation of Taut’s title chapter It was Dodds’ enthusiasm that gave us the impetus to approach Ashgate Publishing in 2012 for their support

to complete a translation of the entire book

In preparing this translation, we enjoyed the support of many people Special thanks must go to Franziska Zürcher-Mindrup, who selflessly gave of her assistance

turning the sometimes ambiguous imaginings of Die Stadtkrone’s four authors

into something reasonably comprehensible in English It was because of her early assistance that we were able to see the project in its entirety as a viable endeavor

We are also especially grateful to Mark Brack, who provided us with many hours of insightful suggestions how to phrase and re-phrase parts of the texts that were at times barely comprehensible in the original German For this, we would also like

to thank Tony Flynn, Frank Trommler, David Raizman, Jon Coddington and Ross Anderson for their candid remarks on the translations and encouragement to re-appraise the legibility of critical points on the texts Discussions with them allowed

us to further gauge questions of context and interpretation

We owe a debt to Ufuk Ersoy for providing critical insight into the introductory chapter “Advancing the Reverie of Utopia.” Many thanks also to Paul Emmons, Marcia Feuerstein, Ellen Sullivan and Barbara Klinkhammer, who in early conversations

inspired the idea for the “Afterword: The City Crown in the Context of Bruno Taut’s

Oeuvre.” Careful reading and suggestions provided by Rosemarie H Bletter and Manfred Speidel were greatly appreciated and helped us to finalize this book

At Ashgate, we must extend our most sincere gratitude to Valerie Rose, who enthusiastically supported this project from the very beginning We would also like

to thank Charlotte Edwards and our production editor Adam Guppy, as well as our proofreader Jon Lloyd We are grateful for their patience and help throughout this process

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ThE CiTy Crown By BRUnO TAUT

xiv

Lastly, we would like to extend a special thanks to both our families who – in their unique ways – sacrificed much of their own time and energy to make this project possible

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Introduction: Advancing the Reverie of Utopia

Matthew Mindrup

Let us build a tower whose summit will touch the skies – Those who conceived the idea of this tower could not have built it themselves, so they hired thousands of others to build it for them But these toilers knew nothing of the dream of those who planned the tower While those who conceived the tower did not concern themselves with the workers who built it The hymns of praise of the few became the curses of the many BABEL! BABEL! BABEL!—Between the brain that plans and the hands that build, there must be a Mediator.1

Maria (Character) in Metropolis, 1927

On August 28, 1917, the German architect Bruno Taut sent the completed draft

of his anthology Die Stadtkrone (The City Crown) to the Diederichs Verlag in Berlin,

Germany.2 Published shortly after the end of the First World War, the leaflet

announcing its publication described Die Stadtkrone as the “Darstellung eine

Gestaltung, eine Form, ein Ideal” (representation of a design, a form, an ideal) to stimulate the common work of mankind towards the creation of a single structure,

a crown “über dem leeren Chaos der Städte” (over the empty chaos of the city).3

The character of Maria in Fritz Lang’s 1927 utopian drama Metropolis ascribes a

similar role to the “Mediator,” who she believes will unite the different classes in constructing a Tower of Babel In Lang’s film, the inhabitants of a large industrial city are separated into two classes: wealthy residents, who live a carefree life in artificial pleasure gardens abounding with flowers, fountains and exotic birds, and a subterranean working class, living beneath the city in poor conditions and making the entire paradise above possible By exaggerating the polarization of the two classes, Lang sought to expose the social and urban problems that had emerged since the Industrial Revolution in Europe and Germany in particular.4 It was because of his own experiences with civic disorder in German cities that Taut

had the inspiration to develop Die Stadtkrone.

Born in 1880, Taut grew up in the Gründerzeit (founding time), a period of rapid

industrial and economic development following the unification of Germany in

1871 As technical developments in farming had reduced the need for people to

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ThE CiTy CroWn By BRunO TAuT

Mietskasernen (rental barracks) grouped around multiple courtyards in deep, poorly

lit city blocks.6 Here entire families lived in tiny, poorly ventilated rooms without indoor plumbing to work long shifts in the factories Meanwhile, the middle and upper classes lived in well-lit, respectable, generously proportioned apartment

buildings recalling the personification of the classes in Lang’s Metropolis In the decade before Lang began filming Metropolis in 1925, Taut belonged to a small

group of artists, architects and sociologists who vigorously challenged the value of the city as a congested, fast-paced industrial organism One of the most important urban proposals of the Industrial Revolution read closely by Taut and his colleagues emerged from the English parliamentary shorthand writer Ebenezer Howard.7

Disappointed with the quality of contemporary urban life, Howard proposed

a model by which people could access the employment opportunities offered by cities and still enjoy a healthy quality of life in proximity to nature In a small book

from 1898 entitled To-morrow: A Peaceful Path to real reform, Howard proposed the

creation of new suburban towns that were of a limited size, planned in advance and surrounded by a permanent belt of agricultural land (Figure 1.1).8 In his proposal,

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InTRODuCTIOn: ADVAnCInG THE REVERIE OF uTOPIA 3

Howard reasoned that his new towns would be free of slums and that their inhabitants could enjoy the benefits of social opportunities, places of amusement, chances of employment and higher wages associated with living in a town and access to the beauty of nature, fresh air and low rents found in the countryside.9

To argue his point, Howard created his famous (and remarkably simplistic) Three Magnets diagram to illustrate his solution to the question carefully placed in its

center: “Where will the people go?” In the diagram, a magnet is superimposed on three types of living environments, including “Town,” “Country” or “Town-Country” and their respective characteristics With individuals represented as needles, Howard reasoned that “Human society and the beauty of nature are meant to be enjoyed together”; his solution was that “the two magnets must be made one.”10

Appropriately organized, each “garden city” would be the perfect blend of “town” and “country,” remaining largely independent, managed by citizens who had an economic interest in them and financed by a group of trustees who leased the lands to its residents.11

It was under the influence of the First World War that Taut envisioned a new way

to advance Howard’s garden city concept by merging it with a dominant central communal structure of glass and concrete he called a “city crown.” With fewer architectural commissions during this time, Taut devoted much of his efforts to the development of his new urban scheme, a utopian garden city of socialism and peace that he believed could overcome national and social differences by means of architecture and more specifically through a city crown Modeled after the European medieval cathedral or Indian temple, Taut’s crown was to act as a towering secular beacon of social harmony around which the political, commercial and residential quarters would be organized This crystalline structure of glass would be the material expression of a new living community in close contact with nature and industry unified by cosmic transcendental thoughts of the collective good

THE CITY CROWN PROPOSAL

Published in 1919, Taut included his utopian garden city proposal in Die Stadtkrone

accompanied by contributions from the architectural critic Adolf Behne, the Expressionist poet Paul Scheerbart and the journalist Erich Baron Taut placed his title essay, “Die Stadtkrone,” at the center of the anthology accompanied by drawings including two elevations (East and West) and a bird’s-eye view (West)

leaving a Stadtsilhouette (City Skyline), Stadtschema (City Diagram), a combination

plan-elevation drawing, oblique view and perspective views of the city center, and both aerial and street-side perspectives of his own garden city of Falkenberg, Germany in the pages after it

In his urban scheme, Taut proposed the construction of a city for 300,000 inhabitants who live in garden city-style housing: “rows of low, single-family houses with deep gardens for every house … so that the residential area itself

becomes a horticultural zone.” Taking his inspiration from Howard’s city of morrow, Taut decentralized industry and distributed housing near horticulture,

To-agriculture and parks to promote a healthy quality of life, large enough to permit a

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4

complete social lifestyle, but not larger.12 Similar

to Howard, Taut’s ideal city is a large circle but with a much larger diameter and ten times as many inhabitants

As the Stadtschema of Taut’s garden city

illustrates, the form of his city is not randomly determined but employs a series of concentric circles to define and segregate its physical, social and economic requirements (Figure 1.2) Similar to a medieval city, Taut first encircles his garden city with a ring-like wall, not of stone fortification walls but trees Then, four main streets cross the entire city in wide arches defining an area of 500–800 meters in its center where Taut has located the central facilities and the crown itself Additional circles in-between the middle and the edge of the city define the rows of residential buildings in a north–south direction Shorter connecting streets interrupt these long lines leading to the city center The main streets to the north and south of the city center define the edges of funnel-shaped fields that extend away from the center to the east and west To the east, Taut locates a church, city administration buildings, commercial buildings and a train station on whose lines industrial areas can develop outside of the city borders to the north and the south In the west, classrooms and hospitals are planned in a “‘… large sector-shaped park [that] brings good air into the city from the woods and fields.”13

In Taut’s city plan, the complex geometrical arrangement of circles permits the centrally located civic structure to connect itself to internal residential neighborhoods and external industrial or commercial zones While the centripetally oriented residential quarters are directed towards the city center, recreation and industry are located in sectors that open themselves to the surrounding countryside and as many neighboring cities as possible nevertheless, despite the effectiveness of Taut’s scheme, he asks “can all of our life’s needs be fulfilled by comfort, ease and pleasantness?”14 For all time, Taut argues, cities have gravitated around a single structure that could unite the longing and hopes of people in a community.15 To restore this structure to the fabric of a contemporary garden city, he proposes the construction of five buildings in its center to meet the social interests

of its community and to fulfill their artistic and entertainment needs

Taut’s garden city is built up in layers, from a residentially planned exterior to

a community-used interior As one progresses from the residential zones toward the city center, they are greeted by stores, cafes and restaurants Then, from this commercial zone, reading halls, museums, aquariums and glass agricultural houses are accessible via tree-line courtyards Finally, inside an innermost colonnade ring, the political and institutional structures that typically occupy the center of a city have been replaced by the places for entertainment and education, concert

1.2 Bruno Taut,

Stadtschema (City

Diagram), in Die

Stadtkrone, 1917.

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and public houses, a theater and opera This hierarchy of buildings is an image

of what Taut refers to as the “human stratification” of the city’s inhabitants, who are not differentiated by their social class, but by their tempers and desires.16 In this way “the entire city is accessible to everyone; and people go to where they are drawn.”17 However, unlike the prescribed activities occurring in the innermost building group, they are only the base of the most important structure in Taut’s

city scheme, a huge glass Kristallhaus (crystal house), while the crown is reserved

for the people without a single dedicated purpose

For this Kristallhaus, Taut makes a distinction between “buildings” whose

purpose it is to provide social or communal experiences, like a theater and a people’s house, and “architecture” that has its raison d’etre in the social wishes of the community containing “nothing but a wonderful room” remaining “quiet and empty.”18 In Die Stadtkrone, this “architecture” that Taut describes as a combination

of concrete, iron and colorful glass has to be rooted “in the inner spiritual life and existence of mankind … including all that through which he perceives his own value and relation to the world.”19 For Taut, a city always had a crown about which its citizens would gravitate It was “the highest structure in a townscape … a religious building” that could “convey our deepest feelings about mankind and the world.”20 However, compared to the religious orientation of historical city crowns, Taut contended that religion was no longer necessary as a force around which to organize contemporary cities In the contemporary conception of the city, Taut argued that the former unifying power of the Christian Church separated itself into smaller congregations and instead promoted socialism as a new faith that could

“unite the longings and hopes of people in community.” Taut already spoke of these thoughts in an article from 1914 where he lamented Hans Poelzig’s loss of the Berlin Opera House competition As he argued, it is not a conventional view

of architecture based upon “Modern Imperialism, Caste Structures and Ethnicity,” but the “typical ideal of our days that everyone sympathizes with today,” the “social thought” that can inspire “the new in architecture.”21 This “social thought” that Taut refers to as a “new form of Christianity” in “Die Stadtkrone” embodies what

he argues to be an urge to “enhance the well-being of mankind” and “to feel as one, solidly united with all mankind.” For Taut, it is this solidarity that can motivate the “many hands and material means” to give “material expression for that which slumbers in all mankind.”22

To justify his thesis that a non-religious structure can crown a city, Taut includes

18 images of proposed and contemporary civic structures to accompany his essay “neuere Versuche zu Stadtbekrönungen” (“Contemporary Examples of City Crowns”) Since a city’s crown should be a center of the community’s spirit and

“represent our view of life,” Taut wants to use cultural and meetinghouses for the crown and not political institutions or existing religious structures.23 Rather, the aim of Taut’s “Die Stadtkrone” is to promote socialism by restoring the spiritual representation of a community to city centers near theaters and gardens, and near all new buildings that emerge from social idealism.24

To prepare the reader for his garden city proposal, Taut surrounded his text and designs with contributions from Behne, Scheerbart and Baron under the title “Aufbau” (“Building-up”), Baron encourages the edification of socialism after

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that the editor of Das hohe Ufer, Hans Kaiser, argued in 1919 that Taut uses like

“Schutzheilige” (patron saints) to his anthology: the beginning with the poem “Das neue Leben” (“The new Life”) and the end with the short poem “Der tote Palast” (“The Dead Palace”).25

In his own essay, Taut traces the importance of “city crowns” in previous cultures, arguing that the erection of new cities and towns without this essential binding element would only produce a “Rumpf ohne Kopf” (“Body without a Head”).26

To validate his point, Taut includes “40 Beispiele alter Stadtbekrönungen” (“40 Examples of Historic City Crowns”) from international cities including Mont Saint-Michel, Strasbourg, Durham, Angor Wat and Bangkok.27 A similar sense of internationalism is implied by Baron’s essay that argues for a new global architecture

of socialism For Behne’s text, Taut includes two images: the Gothic Kathedrale zu rouen (Cathedral of Rouen) at the beginning and the Indian Palitana der grosse Tempel Chamukte (Palitana, The Great Temple of Chamukte) at the end With these

examples Taut wants to extend Behne’s study of the Gothic cathedral, and the picture frame in particular, to Indian temples Together, the texts and images in Taut’s anthology suggest that his proposal is not limited to European cities but a human phenomenon that transcends geography and culture

As a complete work, the texts and images in Taut’s anthology are composed

in layers through which the reader is guided to understand the efficacy of his city crown proposal In an essay about Bruno Taut, Mathias Schirren supports this reading comparing the structure of Die Stadtkrone to a medieval reliquary in which the most sacred, the drawings of the city crown are hidden in its core Schirren makes this comparison based upon a short essay Taut published in 1919 entitled

“Bildschreine” (“Picture Shrine”), wherein Schirren argues Taut provides a possible

explanation for the composition of his book reasoning that a work of art should

be segregated from the activities of everyday life because it may dull the eye and distract the mind.28 As Taut explains, an artwork should be framed and hidden

in the middle of a shrine that has been “adapted to the subject of the picture.”29

The drawings that Taut locates in the center of his anthology are comparable to such an artwork framed by additional texts and images The historic examples

at the beginning prepare the reader for the subject matter and argue for the necessity of Taut’s urban scheme, while his section entitled “neuer Versuch zu

Stadtbekrönungen” (“Recent Attempts at Crowning Cities”) explains its costs and

includes contemporary examples to substantiate its validity in contemporary architectural practice

A letter to his wife Hedwig from August 13, 1917 indicates that Taut had only organized the texts and images into a “concept book” at a very late stage in the planning of his anthology when he included Jan van Eyck’s painting of St Barbara

as the cover page.30 In van Eyck’s representation, St Barbara is sitting on a hill,

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holding a palm branch and reading an open book while the tower from which she became enlightened is under construction in the background Speidel notes that Taut did not include a title to van Eyck’s drawing in the City Crown reasoning that

he probably knew the authorship and the role of Saint Barbara as the patron saint

of craftsmen but wanted to give it a new meaning in its new context For Speidel it was “a personal dedication to [Taut’s] wife” but this doesn’t take into consideration that the Saint, like the reader, is fondly reading a book (the city crown?) while a unified community is building their own city crown in the background

early ManifesTaTions

Despite the dating of Taut’s letter to his wife mentioned at the beginning of this introduction, his proposal to advance the practical social reforms of the English garden city concept with a city crown did not emerge suddenly in the months before its publication Since the founding of his office with Franz Hoffmann in 1909, one can observe in Taut’s completed projects, publications and correspondences

a slow synthesis of experiences in architecture, garden city housing and pavilion design that had crystallized in a project for Constantinople (today Istanbul in Turkey), but were missing so far from garden city designs

Like many German architects at the beginning of the twentieth century, Taut developed an interest in resolving the afflictions caused by the rapid industrialization and concomitant densification of European cities At the end of the nineteenth century, urban planning theory as a scientific topic with the goal

of advising problem solving did not yet exist In his 1889 book Der Städtebau nach seinen künstlerischen Grundsätzen (City Planning According to Artistic Principles), the Austrian architect and critic Camillo Sitte tried to resolve the distress by

rejecting grid planning and the development of over-scaled boulevards and plazas promoting instead the creation of irregular or “organic” urban patterns with more intimate public spaces enhanced by monuments and other aesthetic elements.31

Sitte’s co-founder of the journal Der Städtebau (City Planning), Theodor Goecke

continued to propose new principles for organizing city quarters and street lines according to research based upon social, economic and health issues.32 yet, other critics took a more radical approach, calling for a return to the countryside An

observer of English housing reform and co-founder of the Deutscher Werkbund (German Work Federation), the architect Hermann Muthesius argued:

Denn wer von den Stadtbewohnern trüg nicht die Sehnsucht nach Feld und Wald, nach Wiesengründen und blühenden Gärten in sich, und wem klänge nicht das

Märchen in den ohren, dass er … mitten in ihnen im eigenen häuschen leben könnte [Whoever of the city dwellers does not bear the longing for field and forest, meadow grounds and flowering gardens, and who do not hear the sounds of the fairy tale in the ears, that they could … in the midst of them, live in their own house.]33

By 1902, the English garden city idea of Ebenezer Howard was carried over to a

circle of poets in the commune neue Gemeinschaft (new Community) located to

the west of Berlin in Schlachtensee.34

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8

The neue Gemeinschaft was a reform movement that sought emancipation

from the effects of industrialization on urban life through a vegetarian, literary and socialist way of life The movement’s dream of an ideal, socialist urban community lasted only a year, with many of the founding members, including Heinrich and Julius Hart, Bernhard and Paul Kampffmeyer, Bruno Wille and Wilhelm Boelsche, reorganizing themselves as the Deutsche Gartenstadtgesellschaft (German Garden City Society) in 1902.35 In the following years, it broadened its tasks to accommodate the German conditions and reissued its Deutsche Gartenstadtgesellschaft Programm (Program of the German Garden City Society) as “the winning over of

the public to the establishment of garden cities.”36 The ultimate aim of Deutsche Gartenstadtgesellschaft was “internal colonization, which will promote industrial

decentralization and with it an even distribution of industrial life across the land through planned establishment of garden cities” and the “expansion of existing towns in the sense of the garden city.”37

Like Howard, the Deutsche Gartenstadtgesellschaft viewed the garden city as a

means for replacing the squalor and deprivation endured by the urban working class with a vigorous and healthy quality of life in close communion with the land and countryside.38 The concepts Raymond unwin developed during his planning

of the garden city of Letchworth were summarized in a textbook entitled Town Planning in Practice and published in 1909.39 unwin’s work was translated a year

later into German under the title Grundlagen des Städtebaus (Fundamentals of City Planning), which became one of the earliest, most widely read urban planning

textbooks in Germany Certainly, it was this German translation of unwin’s textbook that created a strong impetus for Walter Gropius and Taut to participate in an excursion to visit the English garden cities during the same year.40

Taut’s trip to England had a profound impact upon him Shortly after returning to Berlin in 1910, he was appointed the advisory architect to the building department

of the Deutsche Gartenstadtgesellschaft in 1913.41 In this position, he accepted commissions to plan two garden city projects during the same year at Falkenberg near Berlin and Reform in Magdeburg, Germany Both estates comprise low-rise terrace houses oriented in north–south rows so that their primary facades were supplied with indirect light throughout the day An amateur artist who enjoyed studying nature and landscapes with pastels, Taut had the houses at both estates painted in varied colors to relieve the residents from the monotony of the typical

gray color of German tenement housing, which, at Falkenberg, became known as

the “Tuschkasten Siedlung” (paint box estates).42 Surrounded by residential areas with a central space-like axis leading to a major civic structure, the Akazienhof, Taut clearly took inspiration for his design of the Falkenberg estate in particular from the first English garden city of Letchworth

The late nineteenth-century industrial and economic expansion that encouraged the development of the garden city movement in Germany also fueled

a pedagogical, technical and aesthetic reformation of Germany’s industrial and applied arts At world fairs throughout the nineteenth century, German applied-arts goods were criticized for their “technical backwardness, aesthetic inferiority, and economic worthlessness.”43 To put Germany on a competitive footing with

England and the uS, the Preußisches Ministerium für handel und Gewerbe (Prussian

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Ministry of Commerce and Trade) began in 1884 to wield more control over the

education of arts, crafts and trades that were perceived to be out of touch with

nineteenth-century changes affecting industrial manufacture.44 In 1907, an

association of German artists, architects, designers and industrialists formed as the

Deutscher Werkbund to establish a partnership between product manufacturers and

design professionals to enlarge the scope of activities of the Commerce Ministry In

combination with industry, these institutions began to develop national, state and

Werkbund-sponsored exhibitions to promote new German industrial and applied

arts that emphasized design techniques oriented toward materials, constructional

principles and local crafts industries.45 It was in this context that Taut received

an opportunity to showcase the creative architectural applications of steel and

especially the glass he later sought to employ in the Kristallhaus of “Die Stadtkrone.”

For the steel industry, Taut produced two exhibition pavilions, the Berliner

Verkaufskontor für Stahlträger (Berlin Sales Office for Steel Girders) for the 1910

ii Deutsche Ton–, Zement– und Kalkindustrie–Ausstellung (Second German Clay,

Cement and Lime Exhibition) in Berlin and the Monument des Eisens (Monument

of Iron) at the 1913 internationale Baufach–Ausstellung (International Building

Trades Exhibition) in Leipzig, Germany Contrary to his simple, pragmatic

housing developments in Berlin and Magdeburg, Taut’s exhibition pavilions were

conceived as mechanisms to create vivid optical and partly haptic experiences

of the materials they were intended to market Similarly, while his Falkenberg

1.3 Bruno Taut,

Das Glashaus

(The Glashaus) at the 1914 Kölner

Werkbund– Ausstellung

(1914 Cologne Werkbund Exhibition), 1914.

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10

Garden City was under construction in 1913, Taut had the sudden inspiration

to explore the potential of glass for the Deutsche Werkbund’s 1914 Kölner Werkbund–Ausstellung (1914 Cologne Werkbund Exhibition) and approached

the glass industry for sponsors.46 As a minor young architect with few sponsors and a personally initiated versus officially sponsored experimental pavilion,

the Werkbund’s executive board was hesitant to include Taut’s proposal in the

exhibition.47 Paid for in large part out of his own pocket, Taut erected a glass and concrete “net cupola” on a curved concrete apron (Figure 1.3) Taut’s ‘Glashaus’,

like that for the Berliner Verkaufskontor für Stahlträger and the Monument des Eisens, used the material being advertised to construct the pavilion itself Taut’s Glashaus filmically orchestrated the visitors’ sensory experiences up, around and

down narrow glass block stairs, next to colored light filtering through brightly colored Luxfer prisms to an internal waterfall in the lower floor With colored tiles and a kaleidoscope slowly projecting abstract patterns on an opaque screen, the “gleaming, transparent, reflective character” of the structural and material

effects of Taut’s Glashaus were repeated almost verbatim in his description of the Kristallhaus of “Die Stadtkrone,” whose “steel and concrete construction” forms the

framework that supports “prismatic glass fillings, colors and colored mosaics.”48

Although Taut’s choice of glass for the construction of the Kristallhaus had its beginnings in the Cologne Glashaus, its most significant promotion as an

architectural building material must be attributed to his friendship and ensuing collaboration with the poet of glass architecture, Paul Scheerbart In a series of

fantasy novels including Das Paradies, Die heimat der Kunst (Paradise, The home

of the Arts) and rakkóx der Billionär (rakkóx the Billionaire) from 1889 and 1901,

respectively, Scheerbart had been developing the theme of an earthly paradise ornamented by architectures of color and glass.49 During July 1913, Taut had

finished the model of the Cologne Glashaus pavilion when he met Scheerbart

whose fantasies of glass architecture must have immediately appealed to him.50

Taut and Scheerbart were in frequent correspondence throughout 1913 and 1914.51

The confluence of ideas between Taut and Scheerbart is evident in Scheerbart’s dedication of “Glasarchitektur” to Taut and Taut’s inscription of Scheerbart’s

14 aphorisms on the drum course of the Glashaus These aphorisms included:

“Das bunte Glas zerstört den Hass” (colored glass destroys hatred); “Ohne einen Glaspalast ist das Leben eine Last” (without a glass palace, life is a burden); and

“Das Glas bringt uns die neue Zeit; Backsteinkultur tut uns nur leid” (glass brings us

a new era; brick culture only makes us sad).52

Echoing Scheerbart, Taut designed the Glashaus with the important concept

of removing the limits of solid walls to allow the interpenetration of “inner” and

“outer” space As Scheerbart argued in the first aphorism of his 1914 published

“Glasarchitektur” (“Glass Architecture”):

if we want our culture to rise to a higher level, we are obliged, for better or worse,

to change our architecture And this only becomes possible if we take away

the closed character from the rooms in which we live We can only do that by

introducing glass architecture, which lets in the light of the sun, the moon, and the stars, not merely through a few windows, but through every possible wall, which will be made entirely of glass – of colored glass The new environment,

which we thus create, must bring us a new culture.53

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To justify the open empty inner spaces of his pavilion design, Taut provided a

guide for visitors in which he explained that “The Glashaus has no other purpose

than to be beautiful.”54 During the same year, he developed the same concept

in an article for Walden’s Der Sturm periodical entitled “Eine notwendigkeit”

(“A necessity”), but cited the Expressionist painters as his inspiration and not Scheerbart.55

In “Eine notwendigkeit,” Taut sought to justify his own aims for the pavilion’s design and at the same to encourage his fellow architects to follow the contemporary Expressionist painters in developing a new architectural spirit As

he explains, what he has in mind is not the painting of facades or an adoption of the “external forms of painting” to architecture because the “functions of the frame are by nature different from those of the picture surface.”56 Rather, holding up the Gothic cathedral as the favored prototype, Taut calls architects to lead the other arts in creating a magnificent new unity of architecture, painting and sculpture whose construction of glass, iron and concrete would help revitalize and renew modern art through a new artistic expression free from utilitarian aims.57 In “Die

Stadtkrone,” Taut sublimated this new quest for architecture into his Kristallhaus:

here architecture again renews its beautiful bond with sculpture and painting

it will all be one work in which the performance of the architect is found in his conception of the entirety; the painter through glass paintings that are removed but also inspired by the world; the sculptor’s art that is inseparable form the

whole.58

In the spirit of a functionless unity of the arts proposed in “Eine notwendigkeit”

or the prismatic experience of color and light in the Glashaus, Taut’s Kristallhaus

was intended to contain “nothing but a wonderful room” in which “full sunlight showers in a high room and splits into numerous fine reflections.”59 As a city crown, Taut’s new architecture would provide the occasion for a city to redeem the

“necessity” he spoke of in 1914 and connect it with the “social commitment” of its citizens in their community buildings.60 yet Taut remained unresolved during this

time between the conflicting demands of function and simplicity in the Deutsche Gartenstadtgesellschaft, and the aesthetic delight and artistic fantasy of the Sturm

group

At the time that Taut published “Eine notwendigkeit,” he also wrote a critique

of a proposed opera house in Berlin for the Sozialitische Monatshefte Contrary

to his call for the construction of a new utilitarian-free architecture in “Eine notwendigkeit,” Taut argued in “Der Architektenkongress” (“The Conference of Architects”) that the spirit of the age would be better expressed by the architecture

of garden cities than by monumental buildings It was not until he came upon the idea of reintegrating a city crown into the English garden city concept that

he was put into the unique position of navigating the interconnections between the spiritual leadership of Expressionism and the practical social reformism of the

Deutsche Gartenstadtgesellschaft During July 1914, the First World War broke out in

Germany and Taut was forced to discontinue the development of his ideas in “Eine notwendigkeit” in order to maintain his office in Berlin and support the war effort through civil service

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12

wriTing Die StaDtkrone

After deliberately weakening his health (with cigarettes and coffee) in order

to avoid being conscripted into the military, Taut enlisted in the civil service in

1915, initially working for the Militär-neubauamt (the Military’s new Building

Department) in Spandau and then in Plaue an der Havel and later as an “engineer”

at the Stella Werke (Stella Works), an iron furnace factory in Bergisch-Gladbach.61

Despite his new commitments, Taut returned to his call for an alternative work of

architecture in an open letter to the March 1916 Werkbund Kongress (Werkbund Conference) in Bamberg entitled “Darlegungen” (“Statements”) Although

no copy of the letter survives, in his study of Taut’s inter-war architectural and utopian activities, Iain Boyd Whyte has attempted to reconstruct the contents

of “Darlegungen” from extant letter conversations between Taut’s fellow

Werkbund members, Walter Gropius and Karl Ernst Osthaus.62 In Bruno Taut and the Architecture of Activism Whyte reasons that Taut’s “Darlegungen” attacked war,

contemporary architectural education and the weakened, democratic structure

of the Werkbund More importantly, Whyte claims it painted an ideal picture of a future architecture and, in particular, one that corresponded to the Kristallhaus in Die Stadtkrone.63 In the same month Taut published “Darlegungen,” he wrote to his brother Max that he had a “brilliant idea” for a new project.64 Although these early musings about the development of a new architecture might suggest that

Taut had already begun to work on Die Stadtkrone in March 1916, there is no firm documentary evidence that it inspired the Kristallhaus in it.

Rather, Taut’s entry for the 1916 Deutscher Werkbund’s haus der Freundschaft

(House of Friendship) competition in Constantinople was perhaps the most

important project for his development of Die Stadtkrone during the wartime

period To be designed was a large “artistic” building on the hill of the old city near

the Hagia Sophia In his “nachwort” (Afterword) to the 2002 re-publication of Die Stadtkrone, Manfred Speidel illuminates the chronology of events surrounding

the competition that led to Taut’s development of the anthology.65 As Speidel argues, the “Orient” must have opened a new perspective for Taut who in his

“Reiseeindrücke aus Konstantinopel” (“Travel Impressions of Constantinople”) claims to have suddenly seen in the east “the true mother of Europe and our slumbering desire always goes there.”66 For his design of the haus der Freundschaft, Taut used his Glashaus as a model, proposing the construction of a large cupola

of concrete ribs and colorful glass fillings on top of a simple flat square block

supported by arcades (see Figure 1.4) Clearly, Taut also used the Cologne Glashaus

as a model for the Kristallhaus in “Die Stadtkrone,” while his travel impressions and

the two silhouette drawings (east and west) in the text suggest that the mosques

of old Constantinople, which both “emerge from the entanglement of houses and back into them … like a pyramid in silhouette” reinforce the harmonic “sound” of the entire city.67 Taut’s former employer and mentor, the architect and pedagogue Theodor Fischer, made a similar observation of historical cities that are crowned by meaningful urban structures that organize:

Gliederung der Massen nach herrschenden und Beherrschten … die

Zusammenfassung aller Teile in eine Einheit … in der alle Teile vom Geringsten bis zum haupte ihre eigenste Bestimmung haben und schön sind dadurch …

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[The masses according to rulers and ruled … the combination of all the parts

in a unity … in which all the parts, from the lowest to the head have their own

definition and are beautiful …]68

It was clearly an idea familiar to Taut, who justified the organization of the urban

elements in “Die Stadtkrone” in a similar way

Despite the new inspiration Taut found in the haus der Freundschaft

competition, he did not win Judged by the participants on november 5 and 6,

1916, Taut was eliminated in the first round, with the classical design from the

German architect German Bestelmeyer taking first place.69 nevertheless, Taut’s

experiences in Constantinople must have stimulated him greatly and he began

a new project, the conception of a complete new garden city surmounted by a

purpose-free “crown.”

Taut’s letters to his brother during the winter of 1916–17 indicate that the

construal of his Die Stadtkrone anthology progressed rapidly Just two months after

receiving the results of the Werkbund competition, Taut wrote to his brother on

December 30, 1916 to wish him a happy new year and let him know about the

progress of his new project that permits him to bear his horrible work situation at

Plaue an der Havel:

ich habe eineinhalb Wochen lang in der Bibliothek Bände gewälzt und viel

fabelhaftes Material gefunden Jetzt bin ich bei dem Projekt selbst, und auch das

rundet sich zu einem resultat Es macht mich glücklich, und ich zittere jetzt nur,

dass mir der Moloch noch 3–4 Wochen lässt, ehe er mich frisst Dann kann ich wie

ein Vermächtnis etwas zurücklassen, was im Groben wenigstens fertig vorliegt.—

Das lässt mich die Konstantinopler Enttäuschung leicht überwinden.

[i have tossed volumes [of books] for one and a half weeks in the library and

found much fabulous material now i am at the project itself and also that one

rounds itself to a result it makes me happy and i tremble only now that the

juggernaut leaves me three to four weeks before it devours me Then i can leave

1.4 Bruno

Taut, haus Der

Freundschaft in Konstantinople

(House of Friendship in Constantinople), 1916.

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14

something behind like a legacy that is at least roughly already there.—This lets

me easily get over the Constantinople disappointment.]70

By the middle of January 1917, Taut had moved to the Stella Werke, a factory for

producing industrial ovens in Bergish-Gladbach, to the east of Cologne, where he was completing his civil service as an “engineer.” As a draftsman of furnaces, Taut was completely uninspired and mentally preoccupied with “other things.” In detail,

we learn from a letter to Max on April 14, 1917 that at the end of service each day,

Taut would return to his room to work on the Die Stadtkrone anthology, which was

at that time very far advanced:

ich sitze hier wie Du weisst nun schon drei Monate als Zeichner für Glühöfen und arbeite Tat für Tag meine 8½ Stunden mit Mühe und not herunter Es ist auch

so etwas wie Militärdienst: Pünktlichkeit auf die Minute und Urlaub selten und schwer … Es würde ganz und gar abstumpfen, wenn man den Kopf noch mit anderem voll hätte … Diederichs in Jena hat meine “Stadtkrone” angenommen, und es werden vielleicht nächstens die Klischees gemacht Jedenfalls will er es bei Friedensbeginn herausbringen Wann wird es aber soweit sein? …

[As you know, i sit here already for three months as a draftsman for furnaces and work day after day my 8½ hours down with pain and misery it is also something like military service: punctuality on the minute, few vacations, and difficult … This would be entirely deadening if one did not have the head full with other

things … Diedrichs in Jena has accepted my Die Stadtkrone and the printings will probably be made soon Anyway he wants to publish it at the beginning of peace When will it be thus far?.]71

Excluding his own description of the city crown itself, Taut had completed a draft

of Die Stadtkrone by May 10, 1917 when he sent the manuscript and drawings to

his brother Max to review As Taut reported to his wife on May 13, 1917, he found inspiration for the design of the crown only a couple days later:

Mir geht es immer gut Gestern Abend habe ich noch einen richtigen Abschnitt zur Stadtkrone geschrieben, in meinem Arbeitszimmer bei Kampffmeyer vor

offenem Fenster mit einer grünen Wiese und bei aufziehendem Gewitter

Kampffmeyer und Baron finden ihn schön Es ist die Schilderung der höchsten Bauten, Theater, Volkshäuser und des Kristallhauses Empfunden habe ich es

am Freitagabend, als Göttel im Saal in Bergisch-Gladbach spielte, ich die Augen schloss und etwas, den raum des Kristallhauses in einem Augenblick sah und empfand, wie es mir unbegreiflich war …

[i am always well yesterday evening i have written a real part of the Die

Stadtkrone in my office at Kampffmeyer’s, in front of the open window with a green meadow and gathering storm Kampffmeyer and Baron found it nice it is the description of the highest buildings, theaters, public houses and the crystal house i have experienced it on a Friday evening as Göttel played in the hall in Bergisch-Gladbach, i closed my eyes and saw and felt something, the room of the crystal house in one moment how incomprehensible it is to me …]72

The slightly sloped square glass tower that Taut describes rising above the cross configuration of four large civic structures: the opera, playhouse, and small and

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large community centers recalls the formal massing of the Indian temples he

includes in Die Stadtkrone However, compared to Das Kristallhaus (The Crystal

Building) on Sheets 3 and 4 of Taut’s later co-authored utopian project, Alpine

Architektur (Alpine Architecture), the shapes are more determined that those in “Die

Stadtkrone” (see Figure 1.5).73 As Speidel similarly notes, when Taut describes the

design of the city crown “not finished smoothly and enclosed with walls but of a

harmony that is rich and perfect in rhythm,” one does not find any visualization

of it in the drawings.74 Rather, Taut restrained from illustrating too precisely the

design of the crown so that it does not influence later executions that may evolve

differently and “whose ultimate solution is comprised of many thousands of varied

possibilities.”75

advanCing The english garden CiTy ConCePT

Although Taut took his inspiration from English garden city designs for the planning

of his Falkenberg estate, in “Die Stadtkrone,” he sought to advance Howard’s

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row houses, each with its own garden, in close proximity to horticulture and

agriculture The structure of this new city’s residential streets were practical and profitably laid out to promote living near well-distributed parks The location

of industry and every element of the living city environment were sensible and controlled to exclude real estate speculation.76

In both Howard and Taut’s schemes, the center of the garden city is surrounded

by large public structures, including an “opera house, theater, a large community center and large and small meeting hall” in the case of Taut and a “town hall, principal concert and lecture hall, theater, library, museum, picture gallery and hospital” in Howard’s design.77 However, instead of an open park at the center of Taut’s city scheme, he merged it with the silhouette of old Constantinople and used

the surrounding public structures to support his utilitarian-free Kristallhaus To this

end, he permitted the business and administration buildings that encircle his city

crown to slowly increase in height towards the central Kristallhaus so that they

“reign powerfully above the entire city.”78

The key to the success of the Kristallhaus in Taut’s garden city scheme was based upon on a faith in Gemeinschaft (community) unified by a common spirituality: a

fusion of Christianity and socialism that Taut called “social commitment.”79 This he explained in “Die Stadtkrone” as:

it is the urge to somehow enhance the well-being of mankind, to achieve

salvation for self and thus for others and to feel as one, solidly united with all

mankind This feeling lives, or at least slumbers, in all mankind Socialism, in the non-political, supra-political sense, far removed from every form of authority is the simple, ordinary connection between people and it bridges any gap between warring classes and nations to unite humanity.80

Taut’s view of Gemeinschaft as a representation of apolitical socialism in “Die

Stadtkrone” echoes Gustav Landauer’s 1911 critique of centralized power structures

in Aufruf zum Sozialismus (Call to Socialism).81 Both Taut and Landauer argued that the centralized state is the root of all contemporary evils and the surrogate for

the natural relationships on which Gemeinschaft should be based.82 Quoting from Alexander von Gleichen-Rußwurm, Taut observes how:

recently, the ideal of the German citizen grew ever more accustomed to letting the state think for him, so one should probably not resent the fact that it finally took possession of the thinking mechanism … in our view, the state is not an end

in itself, an organized power, but a structure tasked to serve the interests of all citizens.83

Contrary to the state, Taut and Landauer saw the way to bring about Gemeinschaft was through an intensification of Geist (spirit) In “Die Stadtkrone,” Geist is what

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humans feel connected to in their innermost being; the bond that links the aspirations and strivings of mankind to one another.84 using a reference from

Theodor Fechner’s critique of materialism in Die Tagesansicht gegenüber der nachtansicht (The Day View versus the night View), Taut wants to reorient the

spiritual focus of the contemporary city away from materialism and the state towards socialism as a new religion that waits like a foot “hovering in the air ready to descend.”85 Whyte reasons that Taut’s section of “Die Stadtkrone” entitled

“Architektur” (“Architecture”) was an attempt to give physical and architectural

form to Landauer’s Aufruf zum Sozialismus.86 The Christian Middle Ages, said

Landauer, were the high point of Geist and the model for a socialist Gemeinschaft

in which the will of the Volk found a perfect expression in the constructions of the geistig leaders – the theologians and the master builders.87 Landauer’s analysis

of early Christian’s Geist, Gemeinschaft and religious structures resonates in “Die

Stadtkrone,” which Taut believes is not only reflected in the relationship between the Gothic cathedral and its surrounding community but also in the temples created by “every great cultural epoch.”

Taut conceived the organization of his city plan around a Kristallhaus that could focus the longing and aspiration of the Volk In the same spirit as his former

teacher and urban planner, Theodor Goecke, Taut organized his city around a central public core – the city crown – and surrounded it by housing, business, industrial and recreational zones.88 His model for the residential areas were the row houses he developed for the Falkenberg estate and included as examples in “Die Stadtkrone.”89 At a superficial glance, the ideology of pragmatism in the design of

the row housing is an expression of Volk with its antithesis in the ideology of the sacred – the expensive and utilitarian-free Kristallhaus as a physical approximation

of Geist using a quote from Master Eckhart’s “Sprüchen” (“Proverbs”), Taut ascribes

to the Kristallhaus the spiritual longings of the Volk who ask God “to make me

empty and pure.” Like a cathedral, Taut’s ultimate task for his “empty and pure” architecture is “to be quiet and absolutely turned away from all daily rituals for all times.”90 In this way the architecture of Taut’s entire city crown reflects the mutual

ideals of the Gemeinschaft The buildings surrounding the city crown express the social freedom and the natural social intercourse of the Gemeinschaft, while the Kristallhaus, supported both physically and symbolically by the Volkshäuser, was in this way to embody Geist:

A minster, a cathedral above the historic city; a pagoda above the huts of the indians; the enormous temple district in the square of the Chinese city; and the Acropolis above the simple houses of an ancient city – all show that the climax, the ultimate, is a crystallized religious conception This is, at once, the starting point and the final goal for all architecture its light, radiating onto each building, down to the simplest hut, demonstrates that [buildings] can fulfill the simplest practical needs and still possess a shimmer of such a conception’s glory.91

In this sequence, the profane architecture of the Volk is illuminated by the glory of Geist in the “crystallized religious conception” that unites society as Gemeinschaft.92

For its imposing scale and communal function but more for its striking beauty, the

individuals in Taut’s city would be inspired by the quiet and empty Kristallhaus as

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by satisfying mere functional needs Rather, what differentiates architecture from building is the imagination of the architect who is not constrained by the basic necessities of a structure and “[t]his shows that the will of the architect as artist

is directed by something entirely different than mere practicality And it is thus quite self-explanatory that this will lies above and beyond mere functionality.”94

In this position, Taut ascribes the role of “geistig creator” to the architect, whom he

reminds us is not free from restraint but must root their imagination in the inner spiritual life and existence of mankind:

The architect must remind himself of his noble, priestly, magnificent, even divine profession and try to raise the treasure that lies in the depths of the human soul

in complete self-abandonment, he must immerse himself in the soul of the Volk (people) and discover both himself and his noble profession by giving – at least as

a goal – a material expression for that which slumbers in all mankind As it was at one time, a talismanic, built ideal should again arise and make people aware that they are members of a great architecture.95

Already in “Eine notwendigkeit,” Taut attributed a unique role to the artist as leader of a society’s spiritual development As Taut insisted: “great art appears in

the work of the individual artist The Volk can then educate itself through it or can

wait until the educators arise.”96 Landauer was also in no doubt as to the identity

of this leader who could give birth to the Geist in the Volk – the artists, “inwardly strong individuals, representatives of the Volk, who carried Geist to the Volk.”97 At

the 1914 Werkbund conference, Whyte remarks that Taut reiterated his own call

for the establishment of a creative elite in an attack on Muthesius’ proposal for the development of artistic “types” that could be merged with mass-production:

Art represents a pyramid, which widens towards its base Above, at the apex,

stand the most able – the artists with ideas The broadening base means nothing more than a leveling down of these ideas on no account can i understand the typical in any other way, and i find it exceedingly depressing that we cannot bring ourselves to trust simply in the artist at the top.98

A source for Taut’s egoist view of the artist’s role could also be found in nietzsche’s vision of the artist as superman, elevated above normal humanity At an early stage in his architectural career, Taut was a convinced nietzschean and wrote to his brother Max in 1904: “I’ve read nietzsche’s Zarathustra over the last three months –

a book of enormous and serious vitality I’ve learned a lot from it.”99

Clearly, Taut’s exposure to such diverse intellectual and artistic figures as nietzche, Landauer, Fischer, Fechner and Eckhart make it easy to bring “Die Stadtkrone” into connection with their writings nevertheless, Taut’s extant correspondence

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shows that his familiarity with the work of such diverse architectural, philosophical and spiritual leaders were constantly expanded during his composition of “Die Stadtkrone.” Certainly, many of his urban design concepts owe a debt in form and content to his former teacher Theodor Goecke and employer, Theodor Fischer

At the Technische hochschule Berlin in 1908, Taut learned from Goecke’s lectures

that the modern city is a holistic organization of city quarters, traffic, people and nature Conversely, Fischer anticipated Taut’s concept of the city as an image of

the stratification of humankind in his urban building handbook Sechs Vorträge über Stadtbaukunst (Six Lectures on Town Planning), which was published after the

war in 1920.100 undoubtedly, nietzsche’s ideas were widespread among European writers and artists at the turn of the century Taut had read nietzsche’s Also sprach Zarathustra (Thus Spoke Zarathustra) from 1904 “with much profit,” but did not

share with his brother what he had specifically gained Again Speidel argues that

attempts to connect nietzsche with thematic strings in “Die Stadtkrone” are not

very convincing:

Freilich ist es nicht sehr überzeugend, wenn die Themenstränge, die man in der Stadtkrone findet, aus den verschieden Schriften nietzsches hergeleitet werden: Tauts Glaube an die Spitze der Menschenheitspyramide aus “Anti–Christ” oder seinem künstlerischen Bau ohne Zweck aus der “Fröhlichen Wissenschaft” mit Zitaten herauszulesen, seinen sozialen Gedanken, der “ein Christentum in neuer Form verheisst” als Ergebnis aus nietzsches “Gott ist tot” zu verstehen, ist zu kurz gegriffen.

[it is short-sighted to derive from quotes Taut’s belief in the top of the human

pyramid as “Anti-Christ” or his artistic building without purpose from “The Gay Science” or to understand his social thought that “brings Christianity in a new form” as resulting from nietzsche’s “God is dead.”]101

Similarly, Whyte’s argument that Taut’s ideal city in Die Stadtkrone is an attempt

to give physical and architectural form to Landauer’s Aufruf zu Sozialismus is inconclusive Clearly Taut and Landauer had similar colleagues in the Deutsche Gartenstadtgesellschaft, and from these individuals Taut could have become

familiar with Landauer’s writings However, if Landauer had provided Taut with the intellectual underpinnings for “Die Stadtkone,” why didn’t Taut reference him? Equally problematic are attempts to find inspiration or justification for the conception of the city plan or its crown in the writings of Meister Eckhart or Theodor Fechner, whose writings Taut does reference In the introduction to his

translation of Alpine Architecture, entitled “Empathy and Astral Fantasy,” Mathias

Schirren notes that Taut only mentions Fechner for the first time in a letter to his brother Max on April 15 of 1917 while a letter to Taut’s wife from August 13, 1917,

weeks before Taut’s Die Stadtkrone was completed, indicate any deeper reading of

Eckhart.102 As Speidel argued, Taut’s quote from Eckhart cited earlier brings a very different tone to the chains of perceptions and for this reason it is likely that the quote was only incorporated into the text of “Die Stadtkrone” at the very end.103

A more sagacious approach to the array of references in Taut’s Die Stadtkrone is to

see him as an active and thoughtful reader of urban, social and spiritual treatises

who used their material to generally support his own arguments in Die Stadtkrone.

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Free ebooks ==> www.Ebook777.comThE CiTy CroWn By BRunO TAuT

20

afTer Die StaDtkrone

Shortly after the abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II on november 9, 1918, the First World War came to an end and handful of artists and architects joined Taut in forming

the Arbeitsrat für Kunst (Working Council for Art) to work with the new socialist government to help forge the cultural politics of the new country Die Stadtkrone was used, by Taut as well as by his friends in the Arbeitsrat für Kunst, Adolf Behne and

Walter Gropius, as a starting point for developing the goals of their new council In Taut’s program, over 50 signatures making up the new council called for all the arts to work together under the direction of architects to shape the artistic values and fabric of the new nation A comparison with Taut’s “Ein Architektur-Programm” (“An Architecture Program”) from Christmas of the same year reveals a number

of similarities: both convey a faith in the power of architecture to create a better future, both contain a clear commitment to breaking down artificial divisions between the arts and both argue for the architect to remain in control of the final design Taut’s “Ein Architektur-Programm” would also be a guideline for Gropius’ Bauhaus Manifesto of April 1919 In “Ein Architektur-Programm,” Taut placed the purpose-free “crown” of “Die Stadtkrone” at the highest point of the city so that

it could radiate its spiritual effect on the activities of the artists and educational institutions below Here, however, Taut no longer refers to it as a “crown,” but simply

as “architecture”:

The direct carrier of the spiritual forces, molder of the sensibilities of the general public, which today are slumbering and tomorrow will awake, is architecture only a complete revolution in the spiritual realm will create this architecture But this revolution, this architecture will not come of themselves Both must be willed

– today’s architects must prepare the way for tomorrow’s buildings Their work on

the future must receive public assistance to make it possible.104

Contrary to Taut’s proposed schedule of the construction of the Kristallhaus in “Die

Stadtkrone,” the development of an “architecture” in “Ein Architektur-Programm” progresses in reverse order: only after the “preparation” of the great common purpose-free building (with experiments for its realization) and after the erection

of people’s houses will the housing developments be executed Perhaps this

“architecture” that Taut envisions in “Ein Architektur-Programm” will also require

several generations for its realization, but in “Die Stadtkrone,” the Kristallhaus

becomes the prerequisite for a “spiritual revolution” after which one can only

“correctly” build

By the middle of 1919, political stability in Germany began to return with the enactment of a Weimar constitution With many of the conservative forces in

power, the Arbeitsrat für Kunst’s hope for social change was severely damaged

The widespread lack of employment limited the professional options of Taut and his colleagues Hoping to keep the dream of a new civic architectural spirit alive, Taut initiated a utopian correspondence between november 1919 and December 1920 amongst 13 architects, artists, an engineer and a playwright

now known as the Gläserne Kette (Crystal Chain), the members’ exchange of

ideas through written correspondence was unfettered by the demands of

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practicability, as Taut encouraged the members of the group to speculate on what form the architecture of the future should take.105 Optimistically, Taut proclaimed that it is perhaps “a good thing nothing is being built” because ideas and forms had to be given time to “ripen” in a manner that is impossible in a normal working environment.106

Simultaneous with his development of the Gläserne Kette correspondence,

Taut had an opportunity to design a city crown for a real project, namely for the Folkwang-Schule in Hagen Taut received the order from Karl Ernst Osthaus in november 1919 for a “new school with an education system based on the greatest independence of students, working in school workshops and a boarding school life

in student communities.”107 After lengthy discussions with Osthaus, Taut developed

a layout of the Folkwangschule based on the shape of a parabola, a semi-circular arrangement of residence halls around a seven-sided erected crystal-like structure

in the isolated middle of the park Osthaus remarked in the publication of the

journal Genius that the heterogeneous, multi-planned building group would, as

Taut aimed for his city crown, unite itself to a whole, and to a satisfactory silhouette with the crystal house.108 The funding for this project, however, fell through in May

1920 and the school was never realized.109

Shortly after its publication, Taut’s Die Stadtkrone received a handful of reviews

that both praised its aims and criticized its arguments One of the earliest reviews

of Taut’s book emerged from his cousin, Hans Kaiser, who “after a long period of unfruitfulness” praised him as “a truly creative person at work His book projects high out of the flood of books.”110 Another positive meditation of Taut’s proposal

in the Westdeutsche Wochenschrift entitled “Zur Wiedergeburt der Baukunst” (“To

the Rebirth of Architecture”) also remarked upon the timeliness of his proposal emerging after “Der Weltkrieg hat das Alte zerstört, Gebundenheit gelöst und neue Kraft freigemacht” (The world war has destroyed the old and loosened up its bondage and given it free new power.) The author simply summarizes Taut’s aim as:

Der Stadt wieder ihre Krone zugeben, ihre höhere Einheit in dem hochragenden Bau, in dem der Drang aller suchenden Seelen empor zum Licht sich vereinigt zu himmelanstrebenden Auftrieb, ist der Sinn der Baukunst.

[To give the city its crown again, its higher unity in the towering construction in which the urge of all seeking souls rises up to the light and unifies itself to the heavenly aspiring buoyancy is the last sense of building art.]111

In Der Zweeman, the art critic Christof Spengemann also praises Taut’s anthology

as “die heutige Zeit durchaus notwendig” (absolutely necessary for our times).112

Lisbeth Stern is similarly surprised in her review, entitled “Stadtkrone,” that after the hardship of more than four years of war, one finds in Taut’s book “ein Glaube an eine gute Zukunft, in der Mensch zum Menschen stehen wird … ohne die Schranken der Stände” (a belief in a better future, in which man will stand with mankind … without the barriers of the classes) In her opinion, “Die Gesichtspunkte, unter denen Taut die frühere Architektur ansieht, und mit denen er an die Arbeit der Zukunft herangeht … ohne die Schranken der Stände” (the aspects under which Taut looks

at the former architecture, and with which he approaches the work of the future),

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22

architecture is “ein Ausdruck der Zeit und ihrer Ideen, die in den Bauten zu Stein geworden sind” (an expression of the time and its ideas that have become stone

in the buildings).113 However, it is for this very reason that Das Kunstblatt criticized

the “mentality of Taut and also maybe in the spirit of the time which has gone off track … the consequence is a certain fanaticism … that despite the enduring call

on socialism and radicalism seems to stand in the contradiction and sense of this time.”114 In a very detailed article for the Deutsche Bauzeitung, Emil Fader echoes

this acerbic critique at the beginning of the following year.115 Fader challenges Taut’s assumption whether or not such a proposal could “produce a new and better people.” Arguing that although a magnificent building may be a reflection of an existing culture, “to lift the cultural level of the people with beautiful architectural designs is an impossible thing.”116 Simply from a pragmatic point of view, Fader argues: “The architect cannot inspire a nation to build by giving them building thoughts; he must patiently wait until the client comes to him.”117 In The City Crown,

though, Taut wanted to play the part of owner and building master at the same time instead of letting “the people come” and to entirely let them be tools of his will and spirit of the time But to this Fader challenges a deeper assumption in Taut’s proposition that the spirit of the time could create a new form which he argues “is often only forming building types In the absence of its own style forms the present spirit of the time makes use of existing motifs and adapts them.”118

The city Taut envisaged overcoming societal strife through the construction of architecture, specifically through its city crown, unfortunately never came true

By 1920, one witnesses a decided shift towards pragmatism and functionality in

Taut’s speech explaining in one of the last Gläserne Kette (Crystal Chain) letters

from October 5, 1920: “In a word, I no longer want to draw utopias ‘in principio,’ but absolutely palpable utopias that stand with both feet on the ground.”119 In 1921 Taut accepted the position as “Stadtbaudirektor” (City Architect) in Magdeburg Though constrained by many functional, financial and urban requirements, the residential quarters Taut designed in Magdeburg and later in Berlin show a delicacy and consideration for their inhabitant that Taut expressed in “Die Stadtkrone” and implemented in his garden city housing projects before the war Taut’s thoughts, and especially his later realized housing projects, which carry the seeds of his hoped for new society in them, were highly respected

When Taut left nazi Germany in 1933, first traveling to Japan (via Zurich) for four years when he accepted a teaching position in Istanbul, Turkey, the inspiration for his utopian musings during the First World War In Turkey he must have felt something like one of the inhabitants of his city in “Die Stadtkrone” returning home As Professor of Architecture at the State Academy of Fine Arts, Taut designed

a handful of educational buildings, including the Faculty of Languages, History and Geography building at the Ankara university in Turkey Still today, Taut is considered one of the most influential architects of the modern movement and his writings had a strong impact on the early twentieth-century architectural culture This first English translation of Taut’s anthology should become a critical text in architectural studies on the history of European modernism, urban design theory and Taut’s oeuvre in general

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noTes

1 Fritz Lang, Metropolis: A Film (London: Lorrimer Publishing, 1974), pp 57–60.

2 “Weil ich die ganze Stadtkronegeschichte nun hinter mir habe, es ist alles gestern an Diedrichs geschickt, und ich nun nie weiss was ich tun soll” [Because I now have the entire City Crown story behind me, everything was sent to Diedrichs yesterday, and I now never know what to do] Letter

to Hedwig Taut from August 29, 1917, Bruno Taut Archive (hereinafter BTA) 01–14 after Manfred

Speidel, “nachwort,” in Bruno Taut, Die Stadtkrone (Berlin: Gebrüder Mann Verlag, 2002), p 28, n 58.

3 Reproduced in Speidel, “nachwort,” p 3.

4 For a summary of Fritz Lang’s allegorical meanings in Metropolis, see Tom Gunning, The Films of

Fritz Lang (London: British Film Institute, 2000), pp 52–83.

5 Kristiana Hartmann, Deutsche Gartenstadtbewegung (Munich: Moos, 1976), pp 8–10.

6 Ibid., pp 10–14; and Dietrich Worbs, “The Berlin Mietskaserne and its Reforms,” in Josef Paul Kleihues and Christina Rathgeber (eds), Berlin/new york: Like and Unlike: Essays on Architecture and

Art from 1870 to the Present (new york: Rizzoli, 1993), pp 144–57.

7 Ebenezer Howard was employed as a shorthand writer by Gurneys, the official reporters of the

British Parliament F.J Osborn, “Preface” in Ebenezer Howard, Garden Cities of To-morrow (London:

Faber & Faber, 1946), p 19.

8 Ebenezer Howard, To-morrow: A Peaceful Path to real reform, with new Commentary by Peter hall,

Dennis hardy & Colin Ward (London: Routledge, 2003), pp 12–19.

9 Ibid., pp 5–11.

10 Ibid.

11 Ibid., pp 12–19 The communal ownership of land was crucial to Howard’s ideal that aimed at preventing the kinds of land speculation that had made industrial cities so dense and unlivable in for the working classes.

12 Ibid., p 13; Bruno Taut, “The City Crown,” in The City Crown, ed and trans by Matthew Mindrup and

ulrike Altenmüller-Lewis (London: Ashgate Publishing, 2015), pp 86–7.

13 With my inclusion of “that” in brackets: Taut, “The City Crown,” p 86.

21 Bruno Taut, “Das Problem des Opernhaus,” Sozialistische Monatshefte, 20(6) (March, 23 1914): 355–7.

22 Taut, “The City Crown,” pp 75 and 84.

23 Ibid., p 80.

24 Ibid.

25 These poems were originally published in art and literary journals at the end of the nineteenth

century Paul Scheerbart, “Das neue Leben Architektonische Apokalypse, Die Gesellschaft, 15(4) (1897): 552–8; Paul Scheerbart, “Der tote Palast: Ein Architektentraum,” Pan, 3 (1898/1899): 162.

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24

26 Taut, “The City Crown,” p 79.

27 Ibid., pp 41–71.

28 Bruno Taut, “Bildschreine,” Das hohe Ufer, 1 (1919): 305 after Matthias Schirren, “Weltbild, Kosmos,

Porportion,” in Winfried nerdinger, Kristiana Hartmann, Matthias Schirren and Manfred Speidel

(eds), Bruno Taut 1880–1938 (Munich: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt DVA, 2001), p 104.

29 Ibid.

30 Letter to Hedwig Taut from August 13, 1917, BTA–01–94 after Speidel, “nachwort,” p 27, n 57

31 Camillo Sitte, Der Städte-Bau nach seinen künstlerischen Grundsätzen (Vienna: Carl Graeser, 1889)

32 Theodor Goecke, “Verkehrstrasse und Wohnstrasse,” Preussische Jahrbücher, 73 (1893): 85–104.

33 Herman Muthesius, Landhaus und Garten (Munich: 1907; 2nd edn 1910) after Kristiana Hartmann,

“Bruno Taut, der Architekt und Planer von Gartenstädten und Siedlungen,” in nerdinger et al (eds),

Bruno Taut 1880–1938, p 137, n 9.

34 Hartmann, “Bruno Taut,” p 138; and Hartmann, Deutsche Gartenstadtbewegung, pp 27–31.

35 Hartmann, Deutsche Gartenstadtbewegung, pp 27–31.

36 “Sie erblickt ihr Haupstziel in der Gewinnung des Volkes für die Begründung von Gartenstädten.”

Hans Kampffmeyer, Die Gartenstadtbewegung, 2nd edn (Leipzig [u.a.]: Teubner, 1913), pp 26–7.

37 “ … ist eine Innenkolonisation, die durch planmässiges Begründen von Gartenstädten eine Dezentralisation der Industrie und damit eine gleichmässigere Verteilung des Gewerbelebens über das Land anstrebt.” Ibid.

38 Howard, To-morrow: A Peaceful Path to real reform, pp 3–5.

39 Raymond unwin, Town Planning in Practice: An introduction to the Art of Designing Cities and

Suburbs (London: T.F unwin, 1909).

40 Hartmann, “Bruno Taut,” p 139

41 Ibid., p 142.

42 Kurt Junghanns outlines the development of Taut’s color scheme at these estates: Kurt Junghanns,

Bruno Taut, 1880–1938: Architektur und sozialer Gedanke (Leipzig: Seemann, 1998), pp 23–4

43 Wilhelm Waetzoldt, “Die Entwicklung des Kunstgewerblichen unterrichswesens in Preussen,”

Deutsche rundschau, 176 (1918): 228–45, 365–80, after John V Maciuika, Before the Bauhaus

(Cambridge: Cambridge university Press, 2005), p 21, n 60.

44 “Rückblick auf die Entwickelung des gewerblichen Schulwesens in Preussen von 1884–1909,”

Ministerial-Blatt handels- und Gewerbe-Verwaltung, 2 (May 6, 1910): 155–64 after Maciuika, Before the Bauhaus, p 115, n 55.

45 Maciuika, pp 137–216.

46 Kai K Gutschow “From Object to Installation in Bruno Taut’s Exhibit Pavilions,” Journal of

Architectural Education, 69(3) (2006): 66; Hartmann, Deutsche Gartenstadtbewegung, pp 104–21

after Iain Boyd Whyte, Bruno Taut and the Architecture of Activism (Cambridge: Cambridge

university Press, 2010 [1982]), p 30, n 14.

47 Thiekötter, Kristallisationen, Splitterungen Bruno Tauts Glashaus Köln 1914 (Basel: Birkhäuser, 1993),

pp 15, 158–9, 168; and Kristiana Hartmann, “Ohne einen Glaspalast ist das Leben eine Last,” in

nerdinger et al (eds), Bruno Taut 1880–1938, p 56, after Gutschow, “From Object to Installation in

Bruno Taut’s Exhibit Pavilions,” p 66.

48 With the exception of Kai Gutschow, who refers to the kaleidoscope as a cinematograph, the

structure and experience of Taut’s Glashaus is generally described in the same way See: Whyte,

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Free ebooks ==> www.Ebook777.comInTRODuCTIOn: ADVAnCInG THE REVERIE OF uTOPIA 25

Bruno Taut, p 35; Rosemarie H Bletter, “The Interpretation of the Glass Dream-Expressionist

Architecture and the History of the Crystal Metaphor,” Journal of the Society of Architectural

historians, 40(1) (1981): 20–43; Gutschow, “From Object to Installation in Bruno Taut’s Exhibit

Pavilions,” p 66; Taut, “The City Crown,” p 88.

49 Paul Scheerbart, “Rakkox der Billionär; Münchhausen und Clarissa,” in Paul Scheerbart, Dichterische

hauptwerke (Stuttgart: Goverts, 1962), pp 227–47.

50 Leo Ikelaar, Paul Scheerbarts Briefe von 1913–1914 an Gottfried heinersdorf, Bruno Taut und herwarth

Walden (Paderborn: Igel Verlag, 1996), p 88.

51 Ibid., pp 97–113

52 With the exception of “Backsteinkultur tut uns nur leid,” these English translations are from Whyte,

Bruno Taut, p 36.

53 Paul Scheerbart, “Glass Architecture,” in Paul Scheerbart and Bruno Taut, Glass Architecture and

Alpine Architecture, Dennis Sharp (ed.), James Palmes and Shirley Palmer (trans.) (new york:

Praeger, 1972), p 41 This English translation is by James Palmes.

54 Bruno Taut, Glashaus (Cologne: Werkbund, 1914), p 289.

55 Bruno Taut, “Eine notwendigkeit,” Der Sturm, 4(196–7) (February 1914): 174–5

61 Letters from Taut to his brother Max from June of 1915 until the end of 1916 indicate that he was

employed at the Militär-neubauamte in Spandau from June to August 1915 and in Plaue and der

Havel from August 1915 to December 1916 Letter to Max Taut, June 11,1915, Max Taut Archive (hereinafter MTA) 01–1090 The letter to Max from november 8, 1916 MTA–01–1153 shows only that he goes “no longer to Plaue.” After Speidel, “nachwort,” p 12, n 23 and p 14, n 29.

62 Whyte, Bruno Taut, pp 45–6.

63 Ibid., p 46

64 “Ich habe eine herrliche Idee, aber ich bin zu matt” (I have a brilliant idea, but I am too tired) Letter

to Max Taut, March 23, 1916, MTA–01–1153, after Speidel, “nachwort,” p 17, n 37.

65 Speidel, “nachwort,” pp 14–17.

66 “Der Orient ist die wahre Mutter Europas, und unsere schlummernde Sehnsucht geht immer

dorthin.” Bruno Taut, “Reiseeindrücke aus Konstantinopel,” Kunstgewerbeblatt, 28(3) (1916/1917):

49–50, after Speidel, “nachwort,” p 14, n 31.

67 “Die Moscheen aus dem Häusergewirre heraus und in es hinein … im umriss aus der Ferne gesehen ganz wie eine Pyramide.” Ibid

68 During the time that Taut worked for Fischer (between 1904 and 1908), Fischer taught at the

Technischen hochschule in Stuttgart from 1901 to 1908, where he gave a lecture in 1903 on the

historical hierarchy of the city organization around a central structure that represented the

ruling authority of the city Theodor Fischer, Stadterweiterungsfragen mit besonderer rücksicht auf

Stuttgart (Munich: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1903), pp 8–11, with my correction of the citation

after Speidel, “nachwort,” p 25.

69 Theodor Heuss, Das haus der Freundschaft in Konstantinopel: ein Wettbewerb deutscher Architekten

(Munich: Bruckman, 1918), after Speidel, “nachwort,” p 16.

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