Frankfurt Architecture: 100 Years of Influence

Anyone who goes to the shelf marked “Architecture” in the Hugendubel in downtown Frankfurt will come across a book from the small publisher Henrich Editions. The title is “New Building One Hundred Years Later”. And the subtitle says: “How do I renovate an Ernst May House? Examples from Frankfurt am Main”.

It is perhaps the most beautiful publication that was published on the occasion of the centenary celebrations of the New Frankfurt. It shows how lively interest is in the movement, thanks to which the previously rather sedate and forgotten city suddenly became the center of the architectural avant-garde in Germany between 1925 and 1930 and took a huge step forward towards becoming a modern city. The music of progress was now playing in Berlin, Stuttgart, Dessau and Frankfurt.

At the same time, the book published by the architect Stephan Kummer is a very practical guide for property owners who want to live up to their responsibility for the building heritage by renovating it in accordance with listed buildings. The demand for such a handbook, in turn, testifies to the ongoing and caring interest in the buildings of the New Frankfurt. A better form of monument protection cannot be imagined than when the users of a building see themselves as its caretakers.

Living in one of the terraced houses in the Roman city or in one of the apartments in the Bruchfeldstrasse settlement in the Niederrad district, better known as Zickzackhausen due to the striking staggering of the buildings, is now considered chic. And there are quite a few Frankfurters who enjoy such a privilege. At least 12,000 residential units that were built in the city in the second half of the 1920s can be attributed to New Frankfurt.

Of course, not every settlement that emerged at that time is part of the cult; When Frankfurt’s city finances got into trouble in the wake of the global economic crisis, the plans for a settlement in the Westhausen district, for example, were greatly simplified. Overall, however, the presence of carefully designed, cityscape-defining buildings from those years is enormous. The settlements, also called satellite towns, were integrated into the landscape; Thanks to the serial construction method, comparatively cheap apartments were created, but the level of comfort was nevertheless significantly higher than in the often run-down old town houses.

Buildings for education, sport, leisure and business that were built back then are still in use today, such as the wholesale market hall, now part of the ECB headquarters, the social center in the Palmengarten, swimming pools and a number of educational institutions. What is particularly true about schools is that they still prove their worth in everyday life today; not to mention that they are much more attractively designed than the modular buildings with which an overwhelmed school policy today reacts hectically to growing student numbers.

Given the country’s current self-blockade, what is particularly striking when it comes to housing construction is the quantity and quality that was built 100 years ago – under much more difficult economic conditions than today.

Anyone who deals with the history of the New Frankfurt is less surprised by the achievements of the time; Then the energy of its initiators and the enthusiasm of their employees are noticeable. There was a kind of start-up mentality in the offices and municipal companies involved. The dynamics of the fifth year between overcoming inflation and the onset of the global economic crisis, when new models of life and aesthetic attitudes were tried out, can also be felt in the reports about the working atmosphere in the New Frankfurt teams, which are predominantly made up of younger professionals.

This cannot be easily reconciled with the common image of the state of the political system in the Weimar Republic; One first thinks of the dispute between the parties in the Reichstag and the many changes of government, which cost the system so much credit that the rise of the National Socialists was unstoppable. What is often forgotten in the stories about the blocked republic is how energetic local politicians in many large cities acted, especially under the new democratic rules. The later first Federal Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, for example, earned a brilliant reputation as mayor of Cologne, who modernized his city with huge investments in the infrastructure.

The fact that Frankfurt became a center of modernity was of course not solely due to Landmann. Rather, he brought other assertive men (women were not to be found in the front row of local politics) to his side. Above all, Bruno Asch as a treasurer who mastered the city’s finances with virtuosity; It was primarily the income from the house interest tax that enabled the ambitious New Frankfurt program to be pursued. And then there was the architect and urban planner Ernst May, who was responsible for the concrete design of the New Frankfurt; In 1925 he moved from Breslau to the Main as head of the settlement department.

The triumvirate, which trusted each other, not only carried out the construction program already described in the few years in office they were granted together. The New Frankfurt was not least a social project. An exhibition in the Museum of Applied Arts under the somewhat silly title “Yes, we care” is a very convincing reminder of this often underexposed side. These were years of change in school education, in health care and in the accommodation of the elderly.

However, the ambition was not only directed inwards. The makers of the New Frankfurt saw themselves as part and driving force of an international planning elite; Above all, the missionary-minded Ernst May wanted to bring the principles of his program to the world. It just so happened that the charismatic head of department was a master of marketing. He launched a magazine that met with an enormous response from experts: “Das Neue Frankfurt”, elaborately and innovatively designed, was published monthly from 1926 to 1931. May also ensured that the second International Congress of Modern Architecture (CIAM) met in Frankfurt in 1929 and not in Dessau or Berlin.

In the long term, however, the Bauhaus relegated the New Frankfurt, which initially seemed to be much more powerful, to the second tier of architectural history. The question arises as to why this is the case. If May was a master of marketing, Walter Gropius was also a genius in this field. Unlike May, who, faced with dwindling creative opportunities, went to the Soviet Union and later to Africa in 1930, Gropius chose the route to America, where he knitted and had knitted together with Ludwig Mies van der Rohe with tremendous response to the Bauhaus legend. The Bauhaus had also built an iconic teaching building in Dessau, while Martin Elsaesser’s design for a Frankfurt art school did not progress beyond project status.

Unlike the Bauhaus in Dessau and the modern settlements in Berlin, the New Frankfurt has been denied world cultural heritage status; The corresponding application failed in 2023 due to the not entirely unreasonable suggestion that variants of what had already been awarded would be considered. People in Frankfurt are beginning to come to terms with the fact that others have achieved a more prominent place in building history. What is much more important is that there is something like a calm pride in the New Frankfurt in the city, or at least among its citizens who are interested in architecture and urban planning. The Ernst May Society was founded in 2003 and operates the May House, a terraced house in the Roman city that has been preserved in its original condition and serves as a museum.

The active society, which can rely on the commitment of many committed members, stands out with publications and events. A Martin Elsaesser company looks after the work of the outstanding architect of the New Frankfurt. The German Architecture Museum has dedicated important exhibitions to both of them, Elsaesser (2009) and May (2011), which have raised their achievements to the attention of many citizens.

Can today’s generation of local politicians learn from the successes of the New Frankfurt? In an interview with the “Frankfurter Rundschau”, Mayor Mike Josef was recently asked whether he would like to see the possibilities back with which Ludwig Landmann promoted the restructuring of the city 100 years ago. If Josef had been able to answer freely, he would probably have said “yes,” but that would not have been well received by either his party or the voters. So the pragmatic social democrat decided on a sober “many things are different today”.

In fact, Josef has to deal with a whole series of obstacles: a magistrate without esprit de corps and mutual trust, whose members are primarily concerned with satisfying the clientele of their respective parties; with an administration whose leaders would rather hedge their bets three times over than make a bold decision on their own responsibility; with citizens who complain loudly about rising rents, but whenever a construction project is planned in their area, they do everything they can to prevent it. The economic framework conditions make investments in housing construction hardly seem worthwhile anymore, not to mention the multitude of legal regulations.

We can only hope that after the local elections in March, new staff will come together in a new coalition that has more joy in shaping things. The New Frankfurt’s answers to the challenges of its time are also suitable for an astonishing number of questions today: serial building in order to lower prices; high density while being embedded in park landscapes to dampen the effects of climate change; careful and varied urban planning to avoid the depressing monotony of today’s cube architecture – a legacy of classical modernism perverted by untalented architects; a sense of the importance of design details that is more important to the well-being of residents than the use of expensive materials; the establishment of meeting points to counteract rampant loneliness.

This would achieve a lot. Nobody will still cling to the idea of helping a new person make a breakthrough with better housing. And it would also be presumptuous to assume that democracy could be saved with a certain style of architecture and design. But if politics and administration set about finding and implementing a few more good solutions, that would certainly not harm the acceptance of the current system.