New Frankfurt (German: ''Neues Frankfurt'') was an affordable

public housing Public housing is a form of housing tenure in which the property is usually owned by a government authority, either central or local. Although the common goal of public housing is to provide affordable housing, the details, terminology, def ...

program in

Frankfurt Frankfurt, officially Frankfurt am Main (; Hessian: , "Frank ford on the Main"), is the most populous city in the German state of Hesse. Its 791,000 inhabitants as of 2022 make it the fifth-most populous city in Germany. Located on its na ...

started in 1925 and completed in 1930. It was also the name of the accompanying magazine that was published from 1926 to 1931 dedicated to international trends in architecture, art, housing and education.

History

The project was initiated by Frankfurt's mayor Ludwig Landmann, who hired the architect

Ernst May Ernst May (27 July 1886 – 11 September 1970) was a List of German architects, German architect and :German urban planners, city planner. May successfully applied urban design techniques to the city of Frankfurt am Main during the Weimar R ...

as a general manager of many communal departments. Renowned architects like

Max Cetto Max Ludwig Cetto (February 20, 1903 – April 5, 1980) was a German-Mexican architect, historian of architecture, and professor. Life Born in Koblenz, Germany, Max Cetto studied at the Darmstadt University of Technology, Munich and Berlin. ...

Martin Elsaesser Martin Elsaesser (28 May 1884 – 5 August 1957) was a German architect and professor of architecture. He is especially well known for the many churches he built. Life From 1901 to 1906, Elsaesser studied architecture at the Technical University ...

Walter Gropius Walter Adolph Georg Gropius (18 May 1883 – 5 July 1969) was a German-American architect An architect is a person who plans, designs and oversees the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to provide services in conne ...

, Ferdinand Kramer, Adolf Meyer,

Bruno Taut Bruno Julius Florian Taut (4 May 1880 – 24 December 1938) was a renowned German architect, urban planner and author of Prussian Lithuanian heritage ("taut" means "nation" in Lithuanian). He was active during the Weimar period and is know ...

Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky Margarete "Grete" Lihotzky (born 23 January 1897 in the Margareten district of Vienna, Austria-Hungary – 18 January 2000) was an Austrian architect and a communist activist in the Austrian resistance to Nazism. She is mostly remembered tod ...

and

Mart Stam Mart Stam (August 5, 1899 – February 21, 1986) was a Dutch architect, urban planner, and furniture designer. Stam was extraordinarily well-connected, and his career intersects with important moments in the history of 20th-century Europe ...

worked in Frankfurt. Under May 12,000 apartments were built, 2,000 more than planned. The buildings not only met the basic needs of housing, they set standards for urban development and design but also broke with house building tradition. All apartments and mansions were equipped with a

Frankfurt kitchen The Frankfurt kitchen was a milestone in domestic architecture, considered the forerunner of modern fitted kitchens, for it was the first kitchen in history built after a unified concept, i.e. low-cost design that would enable efficient work. It ...

Catherine Bauer Wurster Catherine Krouse Bauer Wurster (May 11, 1905 – November 21, 1964) was an American public housing advocate and educator of city planners and urban planners. A leading member of the "housers," a group of planners who advocated affordable hous ...

visited the buildings in 1930 and was inspired by the work of May. Nazi critics denigrated the project as “Mr May's small Soviet industry”Fassil Demissie: ''Colonial Architecture and Urbanism in Africa'', 2011 pg.374 and

Joseph Goebbels Paul Joseph Goebbels (; 29 October 1897 – 1 May 1945) was a German Nazi politician who was the ''Gauleiter'' (district leader) of Berlin, chief propagandist for the Nazi Party, and then Reich Minister of Propaganda from 1933 to 19 ...

called Ernst May the “Lenin of German architecture”, even if it is told that he loved the modern architecture. The Nazis stopped all construction activities and presented the estates to foreign visitors as their own new Nationalsocialist architecture. Most employees of the project left Germany after 1933, some of them followed Ernst May to the Soviet Union, which invited teams of famous architects, like Le Corbusier and from the Bauhaus to work there. After some demolitions of houses designed by

and protest, the estates were declared protected landmarks in the late 1970s. One two-storey terrace house was renovated and restored into the standard of 1928 by the Ernst May Society, it is called the ''Ernst May House'' and is a museum today. The reconstruction was underpinned by research by architectural historians.

Selected projects

*Villa May, Frankfurt am Main, 1925 *Villa Elsaesser, Frankfurt am Main, 1925–1926 *Estate Höhenblick, Frankfurt am Main, 1926–1927 *Estate Bruchfeldstraße (Zickzackhausen), Frankfurt am Main, 1926–1927 *Estate Riederwald, Frankfurt am Main, 1926–1927 *Estate Praunheim, Frankfurt am Main, 1926–1928 *Estate Römerstadt, Frankfurt am Main, 1926–1928 *Estate Bornheimer Hang, Frankfurt am Main, 1926–1930 *Estate Heimatsiedlung, Frankfurt am Main, 1927–1934 *Estate Hellerhof, Frankfurt am Main, 1929–1932 *Röderberg school, Frankfurt am Main, 1929–1930 *Estate Westhausen, Frankfurt am Main, 1929–1931 *House in Dornbusch, Frankfurt am Main, 1927–1931

Literature

* * *

References

External links

Exhibition "Modernism in Frankfurt, 1919–1933"

May's housing project

Website of the Ernst-May-Society
{{coord missing, Hesse Buildings and structures in Frankfurt Housing in Germany Public housing Architecture in Germany 1920s architecture Modernist architecture in Germany Heritage sites in Hesse

History

Selected projects

Literature

See also

References

External links