On Municipal Governance, Urban Housing and Building in National Socialist Germany

Abstract

This article takes up recent discussions of the role of “ordinary Germans” and municipal actors played in the National Socialist regime, with a particular focus on antisemitic persecution in the housing and construction sector. It first retraces how a new regime of governance was introduced at the municipal level and then discusses the interplay between popular violence and administrative and legal repression against Jewish people in different segments of urban society. Furthermore, the Nazi governance of planning and construction is discussed with special reference to some crucial legal initiatives, many of which failed. Finally, some personal continuities and ruptures in the post-war period are discussed, with particular attention to the time lag in the critical public debate on the local scale of the Nazi regime, which only emerged from the 1980s onwards.