Ideological Equals

Women Architects in Socialist Europe 1945-1989

Mary Pepchinski, Mariann Simon, Mary Pepchinski, Mariann Simon

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317119012
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Architecture General

Ideological Equals: Women Architects in Socialist Europe 1945-1989 presents an alternative narrative of women in architecture. A topic often considered from the perspective of difference, this edited collection conversely focuses on the woman architect in a position of equality with their male counterparts. The book looks at nations in Eastern Europe under Socialism where, between 1945 and 1989, a contrasting vision of gender relations was propagated in response to the need for engineers and architects. It includes contributions from established and emerging academics in the fields of 20th century history, art history, and architectural history in Central and Eastern Europe exploring the political, economic and social mechanisms which either encouraged or limited the rise of the woman architect. Investigating the inherent contradictions of Socialist gender ideology and practice, this illustrated volume examines the individuals in different contexts; the building types the women produced; the books and theory they were able to write; their contacts to international organizations; and their representation on both sides of the Iron Curtain.

Part 1

Case studies

1 Between state socialist emancipation and professional desire

Women architects in the German Democratic Republic, 1949−1990

Harald Engler

Of the 100,000 registered architects currently active in Germany, approximately 34,000, or one third, are women.¹ Thirty years ago, women accounted for roughly one quarter of all architects in the German Democratic Republic, or GDR,² but less than 10 percent of those in the Federal Republic of Germany, or FRG.³ From a quantitative standpoint, women architects in the GDR made great professional strides in the architecture profession and building industry. However, when their impressive numbers are considered from a qualitative standpoint, this success is misleading because they rarely assumed key positions of power and influence.

Whereas studies about the role of women in GDR society have multiplied during the past few decades, substantial investigations about East German women architects and their buildings are in short supply.⁴ This dearth of material contrasts the well-documented histories of women who were active in German architecture during the first half of the 20th century.⁵ Due to this shortage, explanations, which illuminate the quantitative success of GDR women architects and their qualitative failure, are not immediately forthcoming.

East German social and women’s policies serve as a framework to consider both the quantitative gains of women architects in the GDR and the measures enacted to support their entrance into professional life, and to evaluate the qualitative successes of women architects. How women architects viewed themselves as professionals and characteristics of their career patterns complete this survey. Drawing upon current research, the author’s own investigations and interviews, archival materials, and contemporaneous professional literature, this chapter argues that deeply entrenched male-dominated power structures in the profession of architecture thwarted the qualitative career advancement of GDR women architects. In response, women architects developed in-official strategies to navigate this situation and to justify a role for themselves in this profession.

Setting the stage: women architects in Germany prior to the Second World War

Although women gained admittance to all German universities in 1908, they remained subject to restrictions. Professors retained the right to refuse to teach women students, and some institutions only accepted female students who had completed a rigorous pre-university program offered by a handful of women-only preparatory schools. In the 1920s, this situation relaxed and women also were able to study architecture at less-restrictive applied arts academies.⁶ It is worth noting that the kinds of projects that were available to first generation were limited in scope, for the most part interior design, social infrastructure, housing, and furniture. This situation changed following the close of the Second World War, and women architects throughout Germany contributed substantially to the rebuilding of their war-damaged nation.⁷ With the founding of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) and the German Democratic Republic (GDR), both in 1949, two antagonistic, political-social systems were established, each of which pursued distinct policies towards gender. Before the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961, some GDR women architects relocated to the FRG because of political differences, and a few went on to exceptional careers.⁸ The narratives of women architects in East and West Germany, however, only began to diverge markedly in the late 1950s and the early 1960s.⁹ Whereas women began studying architecture in greater numbers in the FRG only in the late 1970s and 1980s,¹⁰ in the GDR women assumed a more important role in the construction industry and in the profession of architecture in the 1950s.

Official and professional support for women in the GDR: the possibilities and limitations of state-sponsored emancipation

Beginning in 1950, the same legislation that guaranteed East German women health services and established a nationwide system of childcare facilities, also called upon parents to inform their daughters about professional and vocational opportunities that were now available to them.¹¹ In the following decade, popular magazines, such as Praktische Mode (Practical Fashion) or Die Frau von Heute (The Woman of Today), were filled with images of working women, fashion for every conceivable variety of employment, and women of all ages studying or learning a trade. The GDR invested heavily in the education and training of women¹² to meet the demand for skilled labor and professionals.¹³ The percentage of working adult women increased from 49 percent in 1950 to 92 percent in 1981, one of the highest statistical rates for female employment in the world at this time.¹⁴

The harsh reality of daily life countered this remarkable professional emancipation. As in other socialist nations, GDR women were subject to the multiple burdens of remunerative work, household responsibilities, and family care.¹⁵ Meanwhile, their extraordinary emergence in the labor force contrasted their extreme under-representation in key leadership positions. Between 1949 and 1990, not one woman succeeded in becoming a member of the highest political body, namely the Politburo of the Central Committee of the State Communist Party (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands, or Social Unity Party; commonly known as the SED).¹⁶ There is a wide consensus among scholars of East Germany that the much-heralded equality of women in the GDR was largely a myth.¹⁷

This is all the more confounding because the level of qualification for women in the GDR rose rapidly. Women comprised 25.2 percent of all university students in 1960, and in 1986 their number peaked at 50.3 percent. The proportion of women students at the technical colleges was more impressive, starting at 28.6 percent in 1960 and reaching approximately 70 percent in the 1980s.¹⁸ A similar pattern can be detected for the proportion of women architecture students, which can be attributed to the state support that was given to increasing the numbers of professionals in this field. Indeed, at certain times in GDR history, the desire to increase the number of women architects led to drastic measures, such as the creation of all-women classes with special schedules for seminars and exams to accommodate students with small children.¹⁹ When a student became pregnant, some faculties devised timetables to allow her to balance education and childcare,²⁰ nurseries were sometimes installed in dormitories to serve young parents, and special housing for married students provided additional assistance.²¹

Once they began working, other support mechanisms took hold. The Association of German Architects (Bund Deutscher Architekten, BDA), a professional organization for architects and planners, which provided members with continuing education, discussion forums, and opportunities to enhance one’s career,²² sponsored a committee on women members. During the 1970s and 1980s, this group was tasked with increasing the number of women in this organization, improving their visibility, and producing statistical analyses of the number of women architects who were active in the national and local BDA groups. The president of this committee, Isolde Andrä (1936), was an expert on school architecture employed at the Academy of Architecture (Deutsche Bauakademie), an elite research institute for architecture and urbanism and by far the most influential architectural think-tank in the GDR. Under her direction, special plans to support women architects were devised to systematically grow the proportion of women in the state offices where they were under-represented, such as urban design.²³ Furthermore, to demonstrate their competence and to counter lingering resistance to female practitioners,²⁴ the leading professional journal, Deutsche Architektur (German Architecture, renamed Architektur der DDR (Architecture of the GDR) in 1974), published portraits of individual women architects or articles about the progress of women in general and their accomplishments.²⁵ In 1970, the Ministry of Construction even published a book entitled Wir Frauen vom Bauen (We Women from the Building Industry) to demonstrate the appropriateness of work in architecture, engineering, and the building trades for women.²⁶

Support for women architects in the GDR: a quantitative analysis

How successful were the GDR measures in support of women architects? Although the share of women in the labor force rose to 49.1 percent by 1985, the job market remained gender segregated.²⁷ The construction industry, which encompassed traditionally male-dominated occupations, was no exception. By 1968, women made up 11.2 percent of all workers in this industry—even though this share was higher than most other western nations, such as the FRG (5.5 percent) or the United Kingdom (0.2 per cent). (At 12 per cent, Japan was the exception.)²⁸ By 1987, GDR women had made progress, rising to 16.78 percent of all employees in construction and the related industries.²⁹ Based on all the applications to the BDA, upon average, 24 percent of all practicing architects in the GDR were women.³⁰

In contrast to these steady increases, a more depressing picture emerges of the possibilities and realities they encountered when they strove for a key position of leadership or responsibility. For example, in the 1960s, women accounted for only 1.2 percent of the Board of Directors of the BDA, and by the 1980s that share had climbed only to 8.7 percent.³¹ Even fewer were elected members of the Board of Directors of the Academy of Architecture. Over the course of its forty-year-long existence, this influential body appointed 120 men but only one woman—Iris Dullin-Grund (1933), the chief city architect of Neubrandenburg.³²

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Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Figures
• Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part 1 Case studies
• Part 2 Individuals in context
• Part 3 Exchange and publicity
• Index