Leberecht Migge
Encyclopedia
Leberecht Migge was a German landscape architect
, regional planner and polemical writer, best known for the incorporation of social gardening principles in the Siedlungswesen (settlement) movement during the Weimar Republic
. Renewed interest in his work in recent decades bears relevance to current concerns about sustainability.
contains numerous contemporary German gardens modeled in the American style—all designed by Migge.
Feeling increasingly dissatisfied designing for the wealthy, Migge left Ochs’ employ in 1913 and began working on public parks (Volksparks). Migge viewed the prototype of the English landscape garden, a style common in Germany since its importation in the late 18th century (as evidenced by the Englischer Garten in Munich and the Dessau-Wörlitz Garden Realm
), as merely a bourgeois aesthetic ideal for urban green spaces, inadequate for the needs of the working classes inhabiting the increasingly crowded cities.
His 1913 book, Die Gartenkultur des XX.Jahrhunderts (The Garden Culture of the 20th Century), explains that all higher garden types came from utility gardens based on ancient basic geometric forms, and that the form of the naturalistic garden, like that of the contemporary public park, was the result of decadent cultural conditions arising from industrialization. Through historical development, all landscape types came from this original, geometric ur-type—a garden plot for growing food.
During World War I and immediately thereafter, Migge designed sport park memorials, where the dead would be commemorated by youth participating in athletics. He rejected the grandiose prototypes for war memorials in favor of designs in which every grave acted as an individual flower bed, the totality of the scheme forming a garden. The food shortages of World War I also prompted an interest in the utopian ideal of an industrial city incorporating farm plots for everyone, an ideal outlined in Migge’s 1919 treatise Jedermann Selbsversorger (Everybody Self-Sufficient).
, Migge’s communal, grass-roots socialism led to his involvement with the Siedlungswesen movement after the First World War. In 1920, with architect Martin Wagner
, Migge founded the Stadtland-Kulturgesellschaft Gross-Hamburg und Gross-Berlin for the instigation of a new policy for settlement of the land. Migge was technical and totally urban, seeing the expansion of industrial cities as inevitable. During the 1920s, Migge adhered to a pragmatic, socially meaningful Functionalism
, at odds with the ideological, aesthetic Functionalism
that was a tenet of the burgeoning International Style
. His plantings and park designs were disciplined and architectonic. Yet his characteristic use of the Trampelpfade (paths trampled randomly over time by users) in his parks belies the rigidity of many of his designs. He also emphasized the relation of plant material to technology—the “Wesen der Pflanze” (the character of plants) over their purely aesthetic use.
Later in the 1920s, Migge’s designs moved from individual productive garden plots (based on the Kleingarten and Schrebergarten model) to the Kolonial Parks , grouping smaller plots around a communal park area. In his 1926 book Die Deutsche Binnen-Kolonisation (German Inland-Colonization), Migge described gardens as industrial products that were essentially tools for better living. He viewed the garden not as a bourgeois escape from industrialized society but rather as a mechanized object, a compatible means of improving life in a mechanized society. The notion of colonization from within was also a criticism of Wilhelmine Germany’s imperialist ambitions. Although Migge saw the virtue in resettlement outside the city as a means of connecting back to the land, his ideas for organizing space applied to the urban inhabitant, the overriding concepts being a part of a comprehensive urban regional planning.
He emphasized maximum efficiency in his garden system, stressing that there was a complete connectivity with the systems of dwelling and the organic system of the garden. He incorporated an experimental farm and intensive Siedlerschule (settlement school) in his designs at the artists’ colony of Worpswede
in 1926. He was also interested in utilizing sewage for fertilization, designing several versions of the urban outhouse, the Metroklo. Both wastewater from the dwelling units as well as human feces from dry toilets were both captured to be used in the gardens at Worpswede
.
Working with leading architects of the Weimar Republic
(Ernst May
in Frankfurt, Martin Wagner
and Bruno Taut
in Berlin, Otto Haessler in Celle), Migge’s designs for the Siedlungen (settlements) characteristically comprised low-lying small flats or row houses
, with adjacent or nearby garden plots. One of the Siedlungen that best expressed this system was Ziebigk in Dessau, designed with Leopold Fischer in 1926 and completed in 1929. Migge also invented a “growing house” to provide housing in the form of a wall to which small units could be added when needed or when affordable. Stressing the importance of the occupant in the planning, use and shaping of the dwelling space, Migge considered the dwelling unit as malleable based on need. The wall was a key element in his designs linking architecture and landscape. In the new housing developments of the 1920s, the Schutzmauer (protective walls) were active functional elements, not merely separating plots, the geometric lines of the Siedlung blocks extending into the garden as part of an overall rational ordering system.
The interpenetration of architecture and landscape along organized rational geometric lines was central to Migge’s architectural ideology. Extensive use of glass—both as doors and windows—formed the Zwischenglieder (interstices) between outside and inside, providing a spiritual connection to the sun, while greenhouses provided winter protection by encircling the dwelling units.
Even during the progressive era of the Weimar Republic
, Migge’s designs were often criticized for being too functional and for ignoring the simple fact that many people would be unwilling to maintain the individual garden plots that were so crucial to his theoretical ideas.
Migge’s political leanings were rather ambiguous, his interest in getting back to the land being considered reactionary by some, while his dedication to the improvement of workers’ living conditions were attributed by others as Communism
.
Nazi ideology later seized upon certain of the principles and vocabulary Migge’s strain of Functionalism
.
In addition to the above-mentioned books and treatises, Migge wrote Der soziale Garten (The Social Garden), which served as a declaration of his social ideas in landscape planning, as evidenced in the subtitle of the work, Das grüne Manifest (The Green Manifesto), and Die Wachsende Sidelung (The Growing Settlement) in 1932.
Leberecht Migge died of cancer in 1935 at Worpswede
.
Haney, David. “No House Building without Garden Building!” (“Kein Hausbau ohne Landbau!”): The Modern Landscapes of Leberecht Migge. Journal of Architectural Education 54:3 (February 2001) 149–157.
Haney, David. When Modern was Green: Life and Work of Landscape Architect Leberecht Migge. London: New York: Routledge, 2010.
ISBN 978-0-415-56139
De Michelis, Marco. “The Green Revolution: Leberecht Migge and the Reform Garden in Modernist Germany.” In The Architecture of Western Gardens, edited by Monique Mosser and George Teyssot, 409–420.
De Michelis, Marco. “The Red and the Green: Park and City in Weimar Germany.” Lotus 30 (1981): 105–118.
Landscape architect
A landscape architect is a person involved in the planning, design and sometimes direction of a landscape, garden, or distinct space. The professional practice is known as landscape architecture....
, regional planner and polemical writer, best known for the incorporation of social gardening principles in the Siedlungswesen (settlement) movement during the Weimar Republic
Weimar Republic
The Weimar Republic is the name given by historians to the parliamentary republic established in 1919 in Germany to replace the imperial form of government...
. Renewed interest in his work in recent decades bears relevance to current concerns about sustainability.
Career beginning
In 1904 Migge began his career with the Gartenbau firm of Jacob Ochs of Hamburg. His tenure with Ochs primarily involved designing private gardens and estates for wealthy clients, as well as outdoor furniture and the peculiarly-German style of arbors or bowers known as Lauben. Despite such commissions, Migge began expressing his social ideals in 1909 with the publication of the pamphlet Der Hamburger Stadtpark und die Neuzeit: Die heutigen öffentlichen Garten—dienen sie in Wahrheit dem Volke? (The Hamburg City Park and Modern Times: Today’s Public Garden—do they really serve the people? It is around this time as well that he became familiar with the American public parks movement. The influential 1911 publication Amerikanische Parkanlangen by Werner HegemannWerner Hegemann
Werner Hegemann was a city planner, architecture critic, and author.Hegemann began his studies in Berlin, studied art history and economics in Paris and economics at the University of Pennsylvania and in Strasbourg, completing his doctorate in Munich in 1908...
contains numerous contemporary German gardens modeled in the American style—all designed by Migge.
Feeling increasingly dissatisfied designing for the wealthy, Migge left Ochs’ employ in 1913 and began working on public parks (Volksparks). Migge viewed the prototype of the English landscape garden, a style common in Germany since its importation in the late 18th century (as evidenced by the Englischer Garten in Munich and the Dessau-Wörlitz Garden Realm
Dessau-Wörlitz Garden Realm
The Dessau-Wörlitz Garden Realm, also known as the English Grounds of Wörlitz, is one of the first and largest English parks in Germany and continental Europe...
), as merely a bourgeois aesthetic ideal for urban green spaces, inadequate for the needs of the working classes inhabiting the increasingly crowded cities.
His 1913 book, Die Gartenkultur des XX.Jahrhunderts (The Garden Culture of the 20th Century), explains that all higher garden types came from utility gardens based on ancient basic geometric forms, and that the form of the naturalistic garden, like that of the contemporary public park, was the result of decadent cultural conditions arising from industrialization. Through historical development, all landscape types came from this original, geometric ur-type—a garden plot for growing food.
During World War I and immediately thereafter, Migge designed sport park memorials, where the dead would be commemorated by youth participating in athletics. He rejected the grandiose prototypes for war memorials in favor of designs in which every grave acted as an individual flower bed, the totality of the scheme forming a garden. The food shortages of World War I also prompted an interest in the utopian ideal of an industrial city incorporating farm plots for everyone, an ideal outlined in Migge’s 1919 treatise Jedermann Selbsversorger (Everybody Self-Sufficient).
Gardens for Weimar Housing
Influenced by the Russian anarchist Peter KropotkinPeter Kropotkin
Prince Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin was a Russian zoologist, evolutionary theorist, philosopher, economist, geographer, author and one of the world's foremost anarcho-communists. Kropotkin advocated a communist society free from central government and based on voluntary associations between...
, Migge’s communal, grass-roots socialism led to his involvement with the Siedlungswesen movement after the First World War. In 1920, with architect Martin Wagner
Martin Wagner (architect)
Martin Wagner was a German architect, city planner, and author, best known as the driving force behind the construction of modernist housing projects in interwar Berlin.- Germany :...
, Migge founded the Stadtland-Kulturgesellschaft Gross-Hamburg und Gross-Berlin for the instigation of a new policy for settlement of the land. Migge was technical and totally urban, seeing the expansion of industrial cities as inevitable. During the 1920s, Migge adhered to a pragmatic, socially meaningful Functionalism
Functionalism (architecture)
Functionalism, in architecture, is the principle that architects should design a building based on the purpose of that building. This statement is less self-evident than it first appears, and is a matter of confusion and controversy within the profession, particularly in regard to modern...
, at odds with the ideological, aesthetic Functionalism
Functionalism (architecture)
Functionalism, in architecture, is the principle that architects should design a building based on the purpose of that building. This statement is less self-evident than it first appears, and is a matter of confusion and controversy within the profession, particularly in regard to modern...
that was a tenet of the burgeoning International Style
International style (architecture)
The International style is a major architectural style that emerged in the 1920s and 1930s, the formative decades of Modern architecture. The term originated from the name of a book by Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson, The International Style...
. His plantings and park designs were disciplined and architectonic. Yet his characteristic use of the Trampelpfade (paths trampled randomly over time by users) in his parks belies the rigidity of many of his designs. He also emphasized the relation of plant material to technology—the “Wesen der Pflanze” (the character of plants) over their purely aesthetic use.
Later in the 1920s, Migge’s designs moved from individual productive garden plots (based on the Kleingarten and Schrebergarten model) to the Kolonial Parks , grouping smaller plots around a communal park area. In his 1926 book Die Deutsche Binnen-Kolonisation (German Inland-Colonization), Migge described gardens as industrial products that were essentially tools for better living. He viewed the garden not as a bourgeois escape from industrialized society but rather as a mechanized object, a compatible means of improving life in a mechanized society. The notion of colonization from within was also a criticism of Wilhelmine Germany’s imperialist ambitions. Although Migge saw the virtue in resettlement outside the city as a means of connecting back to the land, his ideas for organizing space applied to the urban inhabitant, the overriding concepts being a part of a comprehensive urban regional planning.
He emphasized maximum efficiency in his garden system, stressing that there was a complete connectivity with the systems of dwelling and the organic system of the garden. He incorporated an experimental farm and intensive Siedlerschule (settlement school) in his designs at the artists’ colony of Worpswede
Worpswede
Worpswede is a municipality in the district of Osterholz, in Lower Saxony, Germany. It is situated in the Teufelsmoor, northeast of Bremen. The small town itself is located near the Weyerberg hill. It has been the home to a lively artistic community since the end of the 19th century, with over 130...
in 1926. He was also interested in utilizing sewage for fertilization, designing several versions of the urban outhouse, the Metroklo. Both wastewater from the dwelling units as well as human feces from dry toilets were both captured to be used in the gardens at Worpswede
Worpswede
Worpswede is a municipality in the district of Osterholz, in Lower Saxony, Germany. It is situated in the Teufelsmoor, northeast of Bremen. The small town itself is located near the Weyerberg hill. It has been the home to a lively artistic community since the end of the 19th century, with over 130...
.
Working with leading architects of the Weimar Republic
Weimar Republic
The Weimar Republic is the name given by historians to the parliamentary republic established in 1919 in Germany to replace the imperial form of government...
(Ernst May
Ernst May
Ernst May was a German architect and city planner.May successfully applied urban design techniques to the city of Frankfurt am Main during Germany's Weimar period, and in 1930 less successfully exported those ideas to Soviet Union cities, newly created under Stalinist rule...
in Frankfurt, Martin Wagner
Martin Wagner
Martin Wagner is an artist, cartoonist, and filmmaker currently living in Austin, Texas. He spent his childhood living overseas, in such locales as Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and Singapore....
and Bruno Taut
Bruno Taut
Bruno Julius Florian Taut , was a prolific German architect, urban planner and author active during the Weimar period....
in Berlin, Otto Haessler in Celle), Migge’s designs for the Siedlungen (settlements) characteristically comprised low-lying small flats or row houses
Row houses
The Row at Stanford University is made up of 36 student-managed houses, from the Cowell Cluster to the Lake Houses and all along Mayfield Avenue, with a total population of a little over 1600 students. Houses range in occupancy from 22 to 59...
, with adjacent or nearby garden plots. One of the Siedlungen that best expressed this system was Ziebigk in Dessau, designed with Leopold Fischer in 1926 and completed in 1929. Migge also invented a “growing house” to provide housing in the form of a wall to which small units could be added when needed or when affordable. Stressing the importance of the occupant in the planning, use and shaping of the dwelling space, Migge considered the dwelling unit as malleable based on need. The wall was a key element in his designs linking architecture and landscape. In the new housing developments of the 1920s, the Schutzmauer (protective walls) were active functional elements, not merely separating plots, the geometric lines of the Siedlung blocks extending into the garden as part of an overall rational ordering system.
The interpenetration of architecture and landscape along organized rational geometric lines was central to Migge’s architectural ideology. Extensive use of glass—both as doors and windows—formed the Zwischenglieder (interstices) between outside and inside, providing a spiritual connection to the sun, while greenhouses provided winter protection by encircling the dwelling units.
Even during the progressive era of the Weimar Republic
Weimar Republic
The Weimar Republic is the name given by historians to the parliamentary republic established in 1919 in Germany to replace the imperial form of government...
, Migge’s designs were often criticized for being too functional and for ignoring the simple fact that many people would be unwilling to maintain the individual garden plots that were so crucial to his theoretical ideas.
Migge’s political leanings were rather ambiguous, his interest in getting back to the land being considered reactionary by some, while his dedication to the improvement of workers’ living conditions were attributed by others as Communism
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
.
Nazi ideology later seized upon certain of the principles and vocabulary Migge’s strain of Functionalism
Functionalism (architecture)
Functionalism, in architecture, is the principle that architects should design a building based on the purpose of that building. This statement is less self-evident than it first appears, and is a matter of confusion and controversy within the profession, particularly in regard to modern...
.
In addition to the above-mentioned books and treatises, Migge wrote Der soziale Garten (The Social Garden), which served as a declaration of his social ideas in landscape planning, as evidenced in the subtitle of the work, Das grüne Manifest (The Green Manifesto), and Die Wachsende Sidelung (The Growing Settlement) in 1932.
Leberecht Migge died of cancer in 1935 at Worpswede
Worpswede
Worpswede is a municipality in the district of Osterholz, in Lower Saxony, Germany. It is situated in the Teufelsmoor, northeast of Bremen. The small town itself is located near the Weyerberg hill. It has been the home to a lively artistic community since the end of the 19th century, with over 130...
.
Sources
Collins, Christiane Crasemann. Review of Leberecht Migge, 1881–1935: Gartenkultur des 20.Jahrhunderts, edited by the Fachbereich Stadt-und Landschaftsplanung der Gesamthochschule Kassel. Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 41:4 (December 1982) 358–359.Haney, David. “No House Building without Garden Building!” (“Kein Hausbau ohne Landbau!”): The Modern Landscapes of Leberecht Migge. Journal of Architectural Education 54:3 (February 2001) 149–157.
Haney, David. When Modern was Green: Life and Work of Landscape Architect Leberecht Migge. London: New York: Routledge, 2010.
ISBN 978-0-415-56139
De Michelis, Marco. “The Green Revolution: Leberecht Migge and the Reform Garden in Modernist Germany.” In The Architecture of Western Gardens, edited by Monique Mosser and George Teyssot, 409–420.
De Michelis, Marco. “The Red and the Green: Park and City in Weimar Germany.” Lotus 30 (1981): 105–118.