Colonialism at the center: German colonial architecture and the design reform movement, 1828--1914.

Scholars have paid little attention to the architecture of German colonialism. This lacuna coincides with a general lack of interest in German colonialism that is in part due to the brevity of the German colonial encounter, but is also a result of the overdetermined nature of the Nazi era in German historiography. This dissertation explores the architecture of German colonialism as a discourse produced primarily between a largely constructed Africa and Germany. I investigate this history across a broad temporal frame from early nineteenth-century villages founded by German missionaries before the onset of formal colonization, to buildings imagined and/or built during the colonial period. I argue that German colonial architecture cannot be fully understood in the narrowly defined timeframe of official colonialism or in terms of the geographic limits of a particular colony. The dissertation therefore locates German colonial architecture in relation to vernacular architecture in the colonies, to the architectural practices of German missionaries before the onset of official colonialism, and to the development of architectural modernism in the metropole. The dissertation is framed around the most significant event in the history of German colonial architecture---the German Colonial Society's architectural competition---which took place in collaboration with the construction of a colonial pavilion at the 1914 Deutscher Werkbund exhibition in Cologne. Using the Colonial Society's competition as a guide, I narrate and analyze the events and themes that characterized German colonial architecture. Close readings of the competition and colonial pavilion then offer insight on the state of colonial architecture in relation to ongoing debates about German culture and industry, and on the relationship between colonial and metropolitan discourse. I conclude that German settlers, colonial administrators, missionaries, as well as colonized subjects were deeply invested in the idea that architectural design was a constitutive, supportive, and at times even a subversive component of colonial ideology. By revealing connections between colonial architecture and various reformist ideas and activities in early twentieth-century Germany that have come to be seen as representative of the period, this dissertation contributes to rethinking the architectural historical canon and expanding existing knowledge about the cultural contexts of German colonialism.Ph.D.African historyArchitectureCommunication and the ArtsModern historySocial SciencesUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/127026/2/3305052.pd