Exporting the German Model

At the university library at NTNU – the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim – there is a particularly well-perused and tattered first edition of Reinhard Baumeister’s Architektonische Formenlehre für ingenieure ¹ from 1866 and Stadt-Erweiterungen in Technischer, Baupolizeilicher und Wirtschaftlicher Beziehung ² from 1876. Both books were purchased, catalogued and stamped by ‘the Canal Authority’s Library’ (Kanalvæsenets Bibliotek). The Canal Authority was established at the very start of Norwegian industrialization (1847) and was, along with the Port Authority, the Lighthouse Authority and the Norwegian State Railways, a central government institution for the development of technical infrastructure that would come to comprise, as of 1905, part of the Norwegian state. ³ When the Norwegian Technical College – designed according to the model of the German polytechnic colleges – was established in 1911, the books were transferred there and presumably comprised, along with Stübben’s Halbband 9 of Handbuch der Architectur ⁴ from 1890 and Sitte’s Der Städtebau ⁵ from 1889, the entirety of an extremely limited collection which students and teachers could choose from within the field of urban planning. The influence of the books in Norway, as in Scandinavia as a whole, was considerable. The purpose of this article is to discuss key characteristics of the scientific, political, organizational and commercial ambitions of the field of urban planning as this was developed in the new Germany throughout the course of the nineteenth century. By viewing the field from the outside and assessing its influence on Scandinavia, its features can acquire enhanced distinctiveness.