Description
The Margarethenhöhe was one of Germany’s first company housing settlements to have a Garden City — like character. On the occasion of her daughter’s wedding, Margarethe Krupp, widow of industrialist Friedrich Alfred Krupp, established the Margarethe Krupp Stiftung für Wohnungsfürsorge (Margarethe Krupp Foundation for Housing Supply) to donate one million marks to the City of Essen, along with the land where the new settlement would be built.[1] Between 1909 and 1932, 776 buildings with a total of 1,390 apartments were built during more than 20 construction phases.[2] The workers’ housing estate not only provided employees of the Krupp steel factory with housing near their place of work, it was also open to the population of Essen. By setting an income limit for inhabitants of the apartments, the foundation ensured that workingclass families from different professions were able to rent functional yet modern living space.[3] In addition, Margarethe Krupp also influenced the urban planning concepts, construction density, and selection of the architect, who was tasked with designing the company housing settlement as their life’s work, so to speak. She settled on young Georg Metzendorf, a member of the Deutsche Werkbund who had already gathered some early experience at the Hellerau Garden City in Dresden. Metzendorf was hired not by the foundation but by the City of Essen, which shows how fully interwoven the city and the company were at the time.[4]
Metzendorf designed the company housing settlement with clear features of a Garden City, including orderliness, limited size, loose building density, plenty of greening, and points of cultural education. Additional infrastructure facilities included schools, daycares, community centers, co-op shops, and restaurants, making it a self-sufficient residential community.[5] Metzendorf designed two different standard floor plans and applied them within the various types of buildings, which included singlefamily homes, duplexes, row buildings in either one or two stories, and stacked in multi-story apartment buildings.[6] Extensive collective facilities or central household services were not provided at Margarethenhöhe, and family apartments remained self-contained. The goal was to provide enough livable housing for the working-class families. As the core of the community, families were to be empowered yet also controlled, ensuring that workers remained tied to the company.[7]
Selected project data
Market square with inn on the left
Kruppscher Konsum (co-op store)
Margarethenhöhe elementary school
Footnotes
Grütter, Heinrich Theodor (2014): Die Gartenstadt Margarethenhöhe, Architektur und Geschichte, p. 18.
Other sources speak of 700 or even 3,090 apartments. The varying data likely reflects the various stages of construction, which can be interpreted differently depending on perspective. The first construction phase lasted until 1932 and was followed by another 1,970 dwellings. See also Grütter, Heinrich Theodor (2014): Die Gartenstadt Margarethenhöhe, Architektur und Geschichte, p. 49.
Grütter, Heinrich Theodor (2014): Die Gartenstadt Margarethenhöhe, Architektur und Geschichte, p. 98.
Ibid., p. 28.
Ibid., p. 29.
Ibid., p. 34.
Petsch (1989): Eigenheim und gute Stube, Zur Geschichte des bürgerlichen Wohnens, pp. 54, 80.
Originally published in: Susanne Schmid, Dietmar Eberle, Margrit Hugentobler (eds.), A History of Collective Living. Forms of Shared Housing, Birkhäuser, 2019. Translation by Word Up!, LLC, edited for Building Types Online.