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Bureaucratic passions and the colonies of modernity: an urban elite, city frontiers and the rural other in Germany, 1890–1920

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 2007

LEIF JERRAM
LEIF JERRAM*
Affiliation:
Department of History, University of Manchester, M13 9PL
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Abstract

This article analyses the ways the urban boundary and the landscapes beyond it were culturally conceived and physically manipulated in Munich between about 1890 and 1920. It highlights planning practice outside the ‘canon’ of planning history, showing the importance of localized decision-taking in urban design. The article explores cities as cultural constructs and material artefacts in Germany as part of a broader project linking planning history to broader historical investigation, and tries to bridge the gap between the ‘material’ city as a physical space, and the ‘cultural’ city of language and symbols.

Type
Research Article
Information
Urban History , Volume 34 , Issue 3 , December 2007 , pp. 390 - 406
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2007

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References

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9 A more ‘historicist’ approach reflecting a German culture ‘at home’ with modernity would be the essays on Germany in Umbach, M. and Hüppauf, B. (eds.), Vernacular Modernism: Heimat, Globalization, and the Built Environment (London, 2005)Google Scholar; Rieger, B., Technology and the Culture of Modernity in Britain and Germany, 1890–1945 (Cambridge, 2005)Google Scholar; Rohkrämer, T., Eine andere Moderne? Zivilisationskritik, Natur und Technik in Deutschland, 1880–1933 (Paderborn, 1999)Google Scholar; Repp, K., Reformers, Critics, and the Paths of German Modernity: Anti-Politics and the Search for Alternatives, 1890–1914 (London, 2000)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jennifer Jenkins, Provincial Modernity: Local Culture and Liberal Politics in Fin-de-Siècle Hamburg (Ithaca, NY, 2003).

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12 Sitzung der weiteren städtischen Wohnungskommission, 4 Nov. 1908. Stadtarchiv München(SAM)-Wohnungsamt(WA)-23.

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20 Evidenced in the Zweckverband Groß-Berlin in 1912, which led to the full creation of Groß-Berlin in 1920 (Crasemann Collins, Werner Hagemann, 68–81).

21 Feuchter-Schawelka, A., ‘Siedlungs- und Landkommunebewegung’, in Krebs, D. and Reulecke, J. (eds.), Handbuch der deutschen Reformbewegungen, 1880–1933 (Wuppertal, 1998)Google Scholar; Judith, Baumgartner, ‘Die Anfänge der Ostbau-Kolonie “Eden” in Oranienburg, 1893–1914’, Zeitschrift für Unternehmensgeschichte, 3 (1990), 154–65Google Scholar; Nina Lübbren, Rural Artists' Colonies in Europe, 1870–1910 (Manchester, 2001).

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23 Ries to the Stadtbauamt and Stadterweiterungsbüro, 19 Apr. 1904. SAM-GW-278.

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28 Städt. Gasanstalt, Zeichnung C, No. 2, ‘Städtische Gasanstalt München. Gasbehälter nach Osten gelegt’, Dec. 1903; Sitzung vom 11. Febr., signed Schwiening, Bertsch; Grässel, Bertsch and Schwiening to the Direktion der städt. Gasanstalt, 26 Apr. 1904; Bertsch to Schwiening, 8 Feb. 1904. SAM-GW-278.

29 Mosse, G., ‘National cemeteries and national revival: the cult of the fallen soldiers in Germany’, Journal of Contemporary History, 14 (1979), 1–20 (13)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Indeed, this association of nature and the ‘extra-urban’ with cemeteries was central to the corporation's thinking; Linhof, R., ‘Die Kultur der Münchner Friedhofs-Anlagen’, Wasmuths Monatsheft für Baukunst, 3 (1918–19), 200–10Google Scholar.

30 Ries and Hollweck to Referat Xa and Verwaltungsreferat Lipp, 8 Jun. 1904. SAM-GW-278.

31 Bertsch to Schwiening, 8 Feb. 1904. SAM-GW-278.

32 Grässel, ‘Ästhetik des Schulhauses’, 4–5. SAM-Nachlass Grässel(NLG)-367.

33 ‘Ein neues Münchener Schulhaus’, Das Schulhaus, 7. Jg, nr. 11 [no date], 403–14. SAM-NLG-367.

34 Ibid.

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37 See the many cuttings in the file, ‘Krupp'sche Grundstückankäufe’. SAM-NLG-400.

38 ‘Ein Rundgang im künftigen Münchner Krupp-Gebiet’, Münchner Neueste Nachrichten, 20 May 1916. SAM-NLG-400.

39 Ibid.

40 Ibid..

41 ‘Das Krupp-Project und das Münchener Stadtbild’, Münchner Neueste Nachrichten, 10 Jun. 1916. SAM-NLG-400.

42 Ibid.

43 There were many articles pursuing a similar theme from a variety of Munich papers, often with no date or attribution, in SAM-NLG-400.

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