Introduction

Germany was becoming the most important industrialized country in Europe during the Wilhelmine era and the subsequent Weimar Republic. The industrial revolution in Germany took off relatively late in time, during the second half of the nineteenth century, resulting in a heavy concentration of mining and steel industry in the Ruhr region in the west of the country. Later, other important regional industrial agglomerations developed, such as coal mining in Upper Silesia and the Saar region, chemical industry in the Rhine-Main region (Bayer in Leverkusen, BASF in Ludwigshafen) and, not least, in Berlin where, machine manufacturing (Borsig, Schwartzkopff) and electrical industries became predominant (AEG, Siemens).

After first briefly examining the nature and development of the industrial revolution in Germany, I will subsequently shift my attention to early factory architecture and the origin of worker colonies (Arbeiterkolonien) and worker settlements (Arbeitersiedlungen), mainly in the Ruhr region. In this context, prior to coal mining corporations like Gelsenkircher Bergwerks-AG (GBAG), steel and arms company Krupp played a key role. Krupp also acted as a national forerunner in terms of the size of corporate welfare work and workingman's housing.

From about the turn of the century, social reform movements, such as the ‘Verein fur Sozialpolitik’ (VfS), the Heimatschutz movement (‘Bund Heimatschutz’), and the ‘Deutsche Werkbund’ (DWB) co-determined, to a large extent, the rather specific nature and further development of corporate welfare capitalism in Germany after 1900. In particular, the Deutsche Werkbund succeeded in successfully linking large, mostly manufacturing firms to renowned industry architects and industrial designers, such as Peter Behrens, Walter Gropius, Hermann Muthesius, and Hans Poelzig. Consequently, more than elsewhere, applied arts became a central element of German corporate welfare capitalism, notably between 1907 and 1930. Moreover, the Deutsche Werkbund and its pre-eminent foreman and politician Friedrich Naumann also introduced and propagated an influential new key welfare-work-concept, quality work (Qualitätsarbeit). On the other hand, compared to the United States, the establishment of worker model towns remained rather limited in Germany in a quantitative sense. However, the Krupp worker model town Margarethenhohe at Essen, built between 1909 and 1918, became world-renowned. The worker garden city Hellerau, near Dresden also gained prominence.