THE RING AND THE ROOFS
Today in Berlin: 4 July, 1926
On this day in 1926 in Berlin a group of progressive German architects founded a new design collective Der Ring. Among its members there were the now legends of German Modernism, like Walter Gropius, Hugo Härting, Mies Van Der Rohe, the Taut brothers, Erich Mendelsohn, Hans Poelzig, Otto Bartning, Ernst May (father of the New Frankfurt), and Martin Wagner (to whom Berlin owes its two most beautiful lidos, Strandbad Wannsee and Strandbad Müggelsee) - to name just a few.
Der Ring grew out of an older group known as the Zehner-Ring (Tenfold-Ring) which focused exclusively on Berlin architecture and urban planning. Der Ring, though, had bigger ambitions: they wanted to be an association of like-minded architects promoting Neue Sachlichkeit and Neues Bauen (New Objectivity and New Building) througout the Weimar Republic and beyond. Sixteen of them them met on May 29, 1926 in Mies van der Rohe’s and Härting’s office (they shared one near Anhalter Bahnhof) and decided to work together.
Unlike similar collectives, the group had no programme as such apart from a general direction they all wanted to follow: importance of individualism in design, co-operation, exchange of knowledge and experience, a slide-show collection for all, and keeping a critical eye on urban development on the state and the city level.
They did not have one preferred style that all members had to follow - some preferred softer organic forms, others went for the industrial. But they all shared one pet-hate: historicism. Turrets, gables, porticoes, uncritical quoting of historic architecture while at the same time forcing Form over Function were a bane of the reformers.
So even though there was no official programme as such, Der Ring's main aims were clear: make sure that functional Modernist architecture pushes out the heavy, pompously overloaded architecture of the late Kaiserreich.
You did not have to wait long for the other side to respond: in 1928 a group of conservative architects established their own collective. They named it - what else? - Der Block. Der Ring’s antithesis.
The conflict between Der Ring and Der Block was bound to flare up. And it, indeed, did: it manifested itself the strongest in what came to be known as Zehlendorfer Dächerkriegen (Zehlendorf Roof Wars), where two completely different residential estates were built side by side: one with modernist, flat-roofed Bauhaus architecture facing what the reactionary troop referred to as "traditional" German gable roofs.
The conflict became highly politicised and soon enough it was about much more than just a shape of the roofs or ornaments. After some members had left the collective before 1933, the group - increasingly attacked by the Nazis - dissolved.
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Sadly, despite their discussions about individuality, these architects managed to create the depressing conformity which took away any graceful additions to buildings which modern tourists now delight in. I may be old fashioned but I yearn for the beauty of pre-Gropius et al