This book is a history of the New Frankfurt initiative, its projects and

actors, notably the architect and planner Ernst May, and its achievements,

set within the turbulent context of the Weimar decade. It

chronicles its many accomplishments: the construction of housing

settlements, innovations in construction and materials, the

parks and garden colonies program, innovations in school, medical

facility and church design, reforms in woman’s sphere, and a

crafting of New Life culture. It examines the New Frankfurt in light

of the social and political debates that shaped it and the works it

produced, and describes the relationship of work and theory to contemporary

reform movements. Finally, the narrative underscores the

gulf between the idyll of modernity and the political and social realities

of life in a Germany on the brink of collapse.

SUSAN R. HENDERSON is a professor at Syracuse University,

where she teaches architectural history in the School of Architecture

and is on the faculty of the Renee Crown University Honors

Program. She specializes in the fields of Islamic and early modern

European architectural history. She holds a B.A. from the

University of Washington, a Master of Architecture from MIT, and

a Ph.D. in architectural history from the Graduate School of Arts

and Sciences, Columbia University.