Emil Lederer · 1906
Emil Lederer’s review examines a Bremen statistical report, published in 1905, on 1,044 dwellings surveyed in April 1904. Its argument follows the report’s two principal concerns: housing conditions, especially hygiene, and rents in relation to tenants’ incomes. Lederer uses the findings to challenge the idealization of the Bremen single-family house and to distinguish the economic explanation of housing prices from the administrative improvement of dwellings.
Bremen’s unusually low number of inhabitants per house cannot, Lederer insists, establish the superiority of its housing. The celebrated single-family house often provides such cramped and unhygienic accommodation that the much-criticized rental tenement can compete with it. Small buildings are subdivided into numerous rooms: 44 percent of living rooms measure at most eight square metres. Even the apparently favorable practice of reserving a room for nonsleeping use becomes questionable when the largest room serves this purpose, leaving tiny chambers for sleeping.
Daraus ergeben sich in Bremen äußerst ungünstige Schlafverhältnisse; die Unterteilung in diese vielen, winzigen Räumlichkeiten verhindert es, daß der ohnehin geringe Kubikinhalt der Wohnung voll ausgenutzt werde.
English translation: From this there result in Bremen extremely unfavourable sleeping conditions; the subdivision into these many tiny rooms prevents the already small cubic capacity of the dwelling from being fully utilised.
The crucial measure is thus usable space and air per person, not the architectural label or household count. Two-fifths of sleeping rooms fail the stated hygienic air-space standard. Comparisons with other cities disadvantage Bremen even though the survey omits its worst housing category. Lederer also connects these conditions with the reported prevalence of pulmonary tuberculosis.
From this evidence he advances a pointed critique of reform assumptions. Homeownership, small blocks, building regulations, and street plans do not themselves guarantee adequate accommodation. He treats these celebrated remedies as accompanying circumstances rather than causes of housing quality. Improvement instead requires sustained administration reaching into practical detail, together with economic development capable of supplying the capital and labor needed for sufficient humane housing.
The discussion of rents shifts from physical conditions to the possibilities open to tenants. Where owner-occupied houses predominate and tenants can themselves afford to buy, Lederer infers that rents remain constrained by the normal return on building capital. In houses containing three or four apartments, however, individual purchase is generally inaccessible, and rents can reach eight percent of assessed value. Here prices become detached from production costs and depend more heavily on tenants’ valuations.
Daraus kann man auch schon in diesen, wenig entwickelten Verhältnissen den Schluß ziehen, daß nicht irgendeine Einzeltatsache des Marktes und der Produktion (z. B. die Spekulation) oder eine Verwaltungseinrichtung die Preise erzeugt, sondern daß die bestehenden und möglichen Wohnungspreise die Grundlage sind, auf der die Entwicklung sich aufbaut.
English translation: From this one may already draw, even in these little-developed conditions, the conclusion that it is not any single fact of the market and of production (e.g. speculation) or any administrative institution that produces the prices, but rather that the existing and the possible housing prices are the foundation upon which the development builds itself up.
This reverses explanations that isolate speculation or an administrative institution as the source of prices: existing and attainable rents themselves shape housing development. Lederer’s broader point is that no single institutional or architectural formula can resolve a problem whose physical and economic dimensions operate differently.
Insbesondere muß man grundsätzlich die Frage nach der Beschaffenheit der Wohnungen in hygienischer Beziehung von dem Preisproblem scheiden; in ersterem mögen Verwaltungseinrichtungen oder Gesetze am Platze sein, in letzterem sehen wir das Ergebnis verwickelter und besonderer wirtschaftlicher Gesetze vor uns, die auch durch staatliche Eingriffe nicht ihre Wirksamkeit verlieren würden.
English translation: In particular one must on principle separate the question of the condition of the dwellings in hygienic respects from the problem of price; in the former, administrative institutions or laws may be in place, whereas in the latter we have before us the result of intricate and peculiar economic laws which would not lose their efficacy even through interventions by the state.
The review’s significance lies in this separation of policy tasks. Hygienic standards can be addressed through law and administration, while rent formation requires an account of economic relationships that intervention does not simply suspend. Bremen therefore serves both as evidence against the single-family-house ideal and as a case for a differentiated analysis of housing reform.
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