Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
48. Although published nearly a decade after the end of the Salzgitter project,
Rimpl's tract,
Die Geistigen Grundlagen der Baukunst unserer Zeit
(Callwey, 1953)
reveals the ideological essence of his thought.
49. All quotations from ibid., 6, 134-137.
50. “Die Stadt der Hermann-Göring-Werke,” in
Die Baukunst, Die Kunst im
Dritten Reich.
51. As Winfried Nerdinger has pointed out, Rimpl's firm was known for hiring
modernists, including a considerable number from the Bauhaus and Gropius's
office.
Bauhäusler
assumed leading positions in Rimpl's giant Salzgitter operation,
making it “the largest reservoir in Germany” for the modern architects who did not
flee the country after the rise of the National Socialists. For photographs of the
workers' housing, see Schneider, 79, 80.
52. See Anne Harrington,
Reenchanted Science, Holism in German Culture from
Wilhelm II to Hitler
(Princeton University Press, 1996).
53. See especially Book IV of
The Republic,
where the components of the state are
compared to those of the individual. On the German biological theories underly-
ing the notion of the state as organism, see Harrington, 59.
54. Rimpl,“Die Stadt der Hermann-Göring-Werke,” 148, 179. Rimpl justifies the
choice of site and layout in terms of its harmony with the natural environment and
topography.
55. Ibid., 140, 141.The projected size of Salzgitter fell well beyond the population
guidelines of Nazi planners like Feder, who envisioned an ideal
Mittel-Stadt
—a
mid-size city of approximately 20,000—large enough to be self-sufficient and to
avoid the backward conditions of small German villages but small enough to avoid
dependence on special modes of transport and other disadvantages of big cities. See
Peltz-Dreckmann, 194, 197.
56. Ibid., 148.
57. Among the dwellings were some 300 experimental homes, using such new
materials as “gas-concrete” (i.e., aerated concrete blocks) and novel building tech-
niques. See Nerdinger, 172.
58. See Chardonnet, 114. In this respect, his designs showed the influence of the
“Neighborhood” concept developed by American city planners in the 1920s. See
Schneider, 67.
