The New Socialist Man in the Plattenbau: The East German Housing Program and the Development of the Socialist Way of Life

Abstract

This article argues that the importance of housing and the urban environment in East Germany in the second half of its existence grew in tandem with a new vision of socialist society and the means that the state should employ to create it. The East German Housing Program, inaugurated in 1971, made space the primary category in which individual and social transformation was envisioned, replacing the pedagogical processes that had originally stood at its heart. In doing so, architects and urban planners drew on three strands of urban planning that have often been seen in conflict in other contexts: the Soviet concept of the Mikroraion or socialist neighborhood, the modernist housing ensemble of Le Corbusier, and the new urbanism of Jane Jacobs.