ABSTRACT
Das steinerne Berlin (The Berlin of Stone), Hegemann’s attempt at a history of Berlin’s architecture and urban history, can hardly be read as a critique of “stone” as facade material. Its subtitle Geschichte der größten Mietskazernenstadt der Welt (History of the Largest Barrack City of the World) gives the correct focus of the book. His critique was directed against what he considered the excessively high building density of Berlin in the old city (Altstadt), in Friedrichstadt, and especially in Hobrecht’s Berlin. His counterexample was the open “green” city landscape with rowhouses, urban villas, or modern Siedlungen of the late 1920s.
