Margarethenhöhe — Planning a Better Workers’ City
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Transcript
Margarethenhöhe was founded in the early twentieth century through the Margarethe Krupp Foundation and designed largely by architect Georg Metzendorf. It drew on garden-city ideas: curved streets, greenery, varied façades and a deliberate rejection of monotonous barrack housing.
The district is often described as an ideal workers’ settlement, but “ideal” should be handled carefully. Company-linked welfare could improve living conditions while also reinforcing paternalistic social structures. Margarethenhöhe is valuable because it makes that tension visible. Industrial capitalism did not shape only factories. It shaped homes, neighbourhoods and expectations about how workers should live.