12 - American Influences on Urban Developments in West Germany

Summary

In the realm of urban affairs, the nature of German-American relations during the first twenty-five years of the Cold War is best characterized as ambivalent. American attitudes toward and attempts to influence the character of German cities after 1945 shifted radically at the beginning of the period of postwar occupation from a policy of discouraging to one of encouraging urban recovery. Although the Germans themselves mostly abhorred American urban development and did not seek to emulate American cities, at times they also found American models worthy portents of the future.

It is worth recalling that theories of urban planning, housing, and architecture were all part of an international discussion throughout this century, a discussion only suspended by World War II. Through professional publications, international conferences, and individual visits, Germans and Americans remained well informed of developments on both sides of the Atlantic, so the direction of influence was never simply one-sided. For example, the architects Walter Gropius, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and other Bauhaus pioneers brought German modernist ideas of planning and architecture with them when they immigrated to the United States in the 1930s. They became Americans, and their ideas gained international currency. Does one consider their influence on Germany after 1945 to be somehow American, a return of German ideas, or both? By the same token, their influence on modern architecture and planning in the United States cannot be denied, but it had nothing to do with postwar German or German-American relations.