Natalie Holmes unearths the intriguing story behind Zehlendorf’s oddly-named housing estate…
Imagine this: in 1925, 70,000 Berliners lived in basements and about 600,000 people inhabited rooms shared with at least three others. Many apartments had little or no heating and the lack of running water made for appalling sanitary conditions. In winter the apartments were damp and icy. In summer they were unbearably hot.
Times were tough, so in order to survive, women and children frequently had to work at home, turning some of their valuable living space into working areas, which only added to the horrendous noise, smells and claustrophobia.
Due to German unification (1871) and the effects of the industrial revolution, Berlin’s population had exploded to 4.5 million by 1920. Exacerbated by tenement-style housing, the city quickly became one of the most populous and densest in the world, where life for the majority of its inhabitants was one of misery and abject poverty.
The most common type of building at this time was a square block—22 meters high and 150 meters wide, according to the limits of the planning regulations of the time. This block usually consisted of a Vorderhaus facing the street, two perpendicular Quergebäuden, a side area (Seitenflügel) and the backyard (Hinterhof).
With demand for housing so high, it was not unusual for up to 600 people to cram into one of these tightly knit constructions; over 1,000 people lived at the building on Ackerstraße 132 in Wedding, no doubt breaking some grim record at the time.
It fell to the fledgling Weimar Republic to take drastic action to alleviate the growing housing crisis, with architect Martin Wagner emerging as a key figure in the housing reform that followed.