ABSTRACT
It may be seen as a certainty that the greatest part of working-class families in Germany would prefer to live in a little house – either owned or rented – instead of an apartment in a housing block. It is equally certain that this tendency has not sprung uninfluenced from the soul of the working class. It is much rather the case that after the war and the revolution a planned manipulation took place, which saw as its aim to plant the ideal of one’s “own” little house and garden in the hearts of the masses. This called forth all bourgeois instincts that naturally are still present in the working class today, and it was hoped that the revolutionary effect of the housing crisis could be turned into a stronger quest for private property. Every worker was to have as an ultimate aim to once again become a “free man on free soil,” which is to say his existence as a miniature villa owner or a miniature feudal lord, who, incidentally and just for the fun of it, works a bit in a factory.
