BERLIN CALENDAR: PARKS AND RECREATIONS - FAREWELL, ERWIN BARTH
Today in Berlin: 10 July, 1933
On this day in 1933 Berlin lost one of its most renowned park and landscape designers: Erwin Barth passed away in Martin-Luther-Krankenhaus in Wilmersdorf. Sad news by any measure but made even sadder by the fact that Barth was only 52. Two days before his death Berlin’s Gartendirektor shot himself in the head.
“If any place deserves to be turned into a lavishly decorated plaza filled with flowers, fountains and the like, then it’s a place inhabited by people who can’t afford their own gardens. In this sense, floral decorations are not a luxury. They can be of great social significance.”
According to Erwin Barth, a Lübecker who moved to Berlin in 1912 and rose to the position of Berlin’s gardener-in-chief, a park needs structure. It requires ornaments but only if served in the right measures. As a great advocate of the idea of a Volkspark - “people's park” - a place easily accessible to all city residents but especially to those particularly disadvantaged in their urban environment, Barth believed that a public park should be a bright, airy place with a calm frame of paths and greens. And serving all age groups, hence his particular attention to playgrounds and quieter nooks for the elder…
