Architecture and History in Germany

Between trees and low-slung houses, children are playing on one of the picturesquely curved streets of Hellerau, while a bunch of architectural sightseers with a layout plan of the colony ambles by. For the rest, a contemplative calm prevails on this Saturday afternoon in the garden city. This suburban idyll will soon be celebrating its centenary, for in 1908 the master carpenter and successful entrepreneur Karl Schmidt moved in here, on the north side of Dresden, with his Deutsche Werkstätten für Handwerkskunst, or "German Workshops for Handicrafts".

One of the most exciting architectural and cultural projects of the 20th century

Schmidt commissioned Munich-based architect Richard Riemerschmidt to build not only a new factory here, but also a garden city and cooperative building society, a green alternative to the explosive growth of big cities of the 19th century. And to make sure there'd be enough room, Schmidt purchased about 140 hectares of land for his new garden city. The foundation stone for the first buildings was laid in 1909, heralding the birth of one of the most exciting German architectural projects of the 20th century. In addition to Riemerschmidt, other prominent architects made their mark on the colony, including Heinrich Tessenow, Hermann Muthesius and Kurt Frick. But Hellerau wasn't just a garden city: it was a haven of reform and culture that drew a great many enthusiasts and curious visitors. Shortly after the founding of the garden city, Heinrich Tessenow built a monumental Festspielhaus theatre here for the Swiss composer/music educationalist Emile Jacques-Dalcroze, the father of rhythmic gymnastics, or eurhythmics as it came to be known. In the years preceding World War I, the small Saxon colony of Hellerau became a locus of innovative European culture, thus giving an added dimension to the concept of the garden city that Ebenezer Howard had propagated in late 19th-century England.

Taking garden cities one step further

Recently, on the eve of Hellerau's centenary, the Master's programme in Historic Monuments Preservation and Town Planning at the Technical University of Dresden held a symposium to explore the future prospects for the garden city concept. After all, housing estates on the edge of town are particularly prized by families with kids, but due to urban sprawl, commuter traffic and low population density, they may cause more ecological harm than inner-city housing. Karlsruhe-based architect Wolfram Baltin has taken up this eco-challenge to the garden city with his own housing complex in Hellerau, called Am Pfarrlehn. Its contemporary design allows for a far greater density than the original edifices. But the idea of a cooperative building society also remains to this day an important concept for the housing market, as Eckart Güldenberg from Hannover underscored at the symposium: that goes for the current trend of Baugruppen, groups that band together to construct new buildings and convert existing ones, as well as for Baugenossenschaften, cooperative building societies formed to serve special interests, such as old-age housing.

Keeping cultural reform alive

But what proves far more difficult nowadays is keeping alive the cultural reformism that Karl Schmidt once interwove into his garden city concept. Rita and Michael Wolfssohn have shown how that can be done, though, with the Lichtburgforum in their Atlantic garden city located in Wedding, Berlin. A listed historic monument, this complex was built in the 1920s and recently restored by architect Matthias Muffert. The aim of the integrative Lichtburgforum – named after the estate's cinema, which was torn down long ago – is to bring the various neighbourhood ethnicities together "under the motto: German – Turkish – Jewish, Intercultural".

A network of garden cities

To make Hellerau a more sustainable community, as well as to promote garden cities internationally, the initiators of the symposium have set up a European Garden City Network. The idea is to foster "international contact between garden city residents and associations, as well as everyone involved in managing, preserving and developing garden cities and in promoting the idea of the garden city". It is a truly European initiative, for the founding members of the network include not only the German garden cities of Hellerau, Marga and Karlsruhe, but also Podkowa Leśna near Warsaw and Hampstead Garden Suburb in London.