Werner Hegemann | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | (1881-06-15)June 15, 1881 Mannheim, Germany |
| Died | April 12, 1936(1936-04-12) (aged 54) New York City, US |
| Alma mater | Humboldt University of Berlin,University of Pennsylvania,Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich |
| Occupation(s) | City planner, architecture critic |
| Spouse | Alice Hesse |
| Children | 1 |
| Relatives | Julius Vorster (maternal grandfather) |
Werner Hegemann (June 15, 1881 – April 12, 1936) was acity planner, architecture critic, and political writer in Germany'sWeimar Republic. His published criticism of Hitler and the Nazi party required him to leave Germany with his family in 1933. He died prematurely in New York City in 1936.
Hegemann was the son of Ottmar Hegemann (1839–1900), a manufacturer inMannheim, and Elise Caroline Friedrich Vorster (1846–1911), daughter ofJulius Vorster, a founder ofChemische Fabrik Kalk inCologne. After graduating from Gymnasium Schloss Plön in 1901, he began college studies inBerlin; studied art history and economics in Paris; economics at theUniversity of Pennsylvania (1904–05) and inStrasbourg, and in 1908 completed his doctorate in economics atLudwig Maximilian University of Munich.[1] In 1905 he married Alice Hesse (1882–1976) in Berlin. The couple had one child, Ellis, in 1906. After obtaining his Ph.D in 1908, Hegemann returned to the United States (with his wife and child) and worked as a Philadelphia housing inspector. In 1909 he was in Boston, working with the Boston-1915 Movement, a five-year plan to develop and improve the Boston area.
Back in Berlin in 1910 Hegemann was General Secretary of the Universal City Planning Exhibition held in Berlin in May and June of that year.[2] The exhibition aroused great interest and was reprised in refocused form inDüsseldorf; Hegemann wrote an article about it for a general audience and a two-volume official book.[3] These city planning exhibitions were the first of their kind: Hegemann was in the right place at the right time to play a formative role in the early development of city planning as a profession.
In 1912 Hegemann accepted an invitation fromFrederic C. Howe, Director of thePeople's Institute in New York, to give lectures on city planning in over 20 American cities.[4][5] In 1916, while in the U.S., he was divorced from Alice Hesse.[6]
As World War I ended Hegemann lived inMilwaukee, where he was deeply involved in work and writing another book. He had established "Hegemann & Peets," a firm specializing in city and suburban planning, with landscape architectElbert Peets.[7] The firm designed theWashington Highlands Historic District, and Wyomissing Park, a "Modern Garden Suburb" inReading, Pennsylvania. In late 1918, visiting his friendFiske Kimball at theUniversity of Michigan, Hegemann met Ida Belle Guthe, daughter ofKarl Eugen Guthe. In 1920 the couple married at the bride's home inAnn Arbor, Michigan. In 1921 Hegemann completed work onThe American Vitruvius: An Architects' Handbook of Civic Art with Elbert Peets, a "thesaurus" of civic art for architects, commenting on about 1200 examples of the discipline (published in 1922).
In 1931 he made a lecture tour through South America, visiting Argentina, where he attended a local convention on urban planning atMar del Plata. Hegemann gave a lecture criticising European aesthetics, patterns and planning of this resort city.[8]
In February 1933, a few weeks after Hitler took power and contemporaneously with theReichstag Fire, Hegemann publishedEntlarvte Geschichte ("Unmasked History"), a book critically and sarcastically questioning the origins of and role models for the Nazi Party. He left Germany on the evening before publication. With characteristic irony Hegemann dedicated the book to Adolf Hitler, leading Nazi bookstores to promote it for three weeks before discovering the ruse and banning the book. In the May 1933Nazi book burnings he was denounced as an "Historical Forger," with his books burned with the Nazi "Fire Oath," "Against the falsification of our history and disparagement of its great figures!For reverence for our past!"[9] After several months inGeneva and France, Hegemann was invited byAlvin Johnson to teach urban planning atThe New School for Social Research in New York City beginning in November 1933.[10] That October Hegemann left Europe for the United States with his wife and four young children. He was one of many intellectuals essentially exiled from Germany due to Nazi hostility and persecution. Upon arriving in New York City on November 4, 1933, Hegemann opined that the German people would not tolerate Hitler for more than two more years. He began lecturing at the New School and organizing assistance for intellectuals and scholars detained by the Nazis in Germany, such asCarl von Ossietzky, another German critic of Hitler, who was arrested and imprisoned by the Nazi's in the same month that Hegemann left Germany. He also wrote in support of Roosevelt'sNew Deal. In 1935 Hegemann began teaching atColumbia University.[11] In 1934 the Nazis seized Hegemann's house in Nikolassee, and in 1938 revoked his doctorate.
Hegemann's early years in the United States, along with his strong education and broad interests, made him an intermediary between city planners and architects throughout Europe and on both sides of the Atlantic. In particular, hisThe American Vitruvius refers extensively to European design, taking many examples from his book on the Berlin 1910 exhibition, while inAmerikanische Architektur und Stadtbaukunst he informs German architects of American solutions.[12] However, his emphasis on urban planning rather than purely formal considerations and possibly his having not been present during the development in Europe of theModern Movement in architecture put him at odds with modernists. For example, in 1929 he was forced to retract an accusation thatMartin Wagner's primary activity as chief of city planning for Berlin was funneling architectural commissions to extremist friends,[13] and he labeledLe Corbusier's Ville Contemporaine project for transforming Paris "onlyvieux jeu" (old hat), sarcastically predicting that it was likely to be realized,
[not] because [the skyscrapers] are desirable, healthy, beautiful, and reasonable from the perspective of urban planning but because they are theatrical, romantic, unreasonable, and generally harmful, and because it is part of the money-making activities of a metropolis, in what is literally the world's most international city, Paris, to serve the need for sensation and the vices of native and imported fools.[14]
Hegemann authored the bookDer Gerettete Christus (Translated asChrist Rescued) in 1928.[15] The book discusses a variant of theswoon hypothesis that Jesus did not die on the cross.[16] When the book was published,blasphemy proceedings were filed by Berlin authorities against Hegemann for asserting that Jesus was not crucified.[17]
During the late 1920s Hegemann published two historical books debunking German heroes:Fredericus (published in Germany in 1926 with an English translation in 1929), andNapoleon, or Prostration Before the Hero (published in Germany in 1927 with an English translation in 1931). In 1931 he made a lecture tour through South America, visiting Argentina, where he attended a local convention on urban planning atMar del Plata. Hegemann gave a lecture criticising European aesthetics, patterns and planning of this resort city.[8] Back to Germany, he devoted himself increasingly to warnings against theNational Socialists in a series of political articles.
In New York in early 1936, Hegemann became ill, first diagnosed withsciatica and then hospitalized with apparentpneumonia.[18] His illness developed during a time of great stress, as he worked to support his family after having to leave all his assets behind in Germany. While bed-ridden atDoctors Hospital he worked on his last book, the three-volumeCity Planning, Housing, intended to supplement and updateThe American Vitruvius. Eventually completed by two co-editors, the last volume appeared in 1938.[19][20] Hegemann died on April 12, 1936, at age 54. The treating doctor opined that the cause of death wastuberculous meningitis.
