The Siedlung Neu-Jerusalem (''New Jerusalem settlement'') is a residential complex along federal route No. 5, here named Heerstraße, in the locality of

Staaken Staaken () is a locality at the western rim of Berlin within the borough of Spandau. History First mentioned in a 1273 deed as ''Stakene'' (from Middle Low German: ''staken'', "stakes") in the Mittelmark region of the Margraviate of Brandenbur ...

, part of Berlin's Borough of

Spandau Spandau () is the westernmost of the 12 boroughs of Berlin, boroughs () of Berlin, situated at the confluence (geography), confluence of the Havel and Spree (river), Spree rivers and extending along the western bank of the Havel. It is the smalle ...

. The ''Deutsche Gartenstadt Gesellschaft'' commissioned Erwin Gutkind , who designed between 1923 and 1924 following the style of

New Objectivity The New Objectivity (in ) was a movement in German art that arose during the 1920s as a reaction against German Expressionism, expressionism. The term was coined by Gustav Friedrich Hartlaub, the director of the ''Kunsthalle Mannheim, Kunsthalle' ...

the plans for the complex, which was completed until 1925.

Overview

The complex, close to the border between the federal states of Berlin and

Brandenburg Brandenburg, officially the State of Brandenburg, is a States of Germany, state in northeastern Germany. Brandenburg borders Poland and the states of Berlin, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Lower Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Saxony. It is the List of Ger ...

, was erected for employees of the

zeppelin A Zeppelin is a type of rigid airship named after the German inventor Ferdinand von Zeppelin () who pioneered rigid airship development at the beginning of the 20th century. Zeppelin's notions were first formulated in 1874Eckener 1938, pp. 155� ...

airfield in Staaken, where

Deutsche Luft Hansa ''Deutsche Luft Hansa A.G.'' (from 1933 styled as ''Deutsche Lufthansa'' and also known as ''Luft Hansa'', ''Lufthansa'', or DLH) was a German airline. It served as flag carrier of the country during the later years of the Weimar Republic and t ...

ran an ''aviation academy'' () for

flight training Flight training is a course of study used when learning to pilot an aircraft. The overall purpose of primary and intermediate flight training is the acquisition and honing of basic airmanship skills. Flight training can be conducted under a str ...

and premises for maintenance purposes. The complex consists of 21 semi-detached houses of equal design and one single house. The cubic buildings with their one-storied annexes earn the complex, aligned along Heerstraße, an appearance of one accord. The gardens are parcelled and imbedded in the cubic forms of the settlement. The cubic design and alternating scaling of each building makes them typical examples of early 20th architectural

Avant-garde In the arts and literature, the term ''avant-garde'' ( meaning or ) identifies an experimental genre or work of art, and the artist who created it, which usually is aesthetically innovative, whilst initially being ideologically unacceptable ...

. Impressive is the horizontal structuring of the façades, covered with white plaster below and showing dark reddish brick masonry above, only partly preserved. As opposed to the semi-detached houses the detached house had been constructed by way of the then still experimental method of

prefabricated building A prefabricated building, informally a prefab, is a building that is manufactured and constructed using prefabrication. It consists of factory-made components or units that are transported and assembled on-site to form the complete building. Vario ...

. The complex is listed as a monument.

Sources

* Rudolf Hierl, ''Erwin Gutkind (1886–1968)'', Basel:

Birkhäuser Verlag Birkhäuser was a Switzerland, Swiss publisher founded in 1879 by Emil Birkhäuser. It was acquired by Springer Science+Business Media in 1985. Today it is an imprint (trade name), imprint used by two companies in unrelated fields: * Springer co ...

, 1992, * ''Reihenhäuser'', Peter Güttler (ed.), Berlin: Ernst & Sohn, 2002, (Berlin und seine Bauten; part 4, vol. D).

External links

* *
Geschützte Siedlung Neu-Jerusalem verfällt (Protected Complex in Decay), on: morgenpost.de Entry in Berlin's list of monuments with further sources
{{Authority control Buildings and structures in Berlin Zones of Berlin Spandau Modernist architecture