The first complete study of single-person mass housing in Germany and the pivotal role this class- and gender- specific building type has played for over eighty years.

Unsettling traditional understandings of housing reform as focused on the nuclear family with dependent children, Single People and Mass Housing in Germany, 1850-1930 is the first complete study of single-person mass housing in Germany and the pivotal role this class- and gender-specific building type played for over 80 years—in German architectural culture and society, the transnational Progressive reform movement, Feminist discourse, and International Modernism—and its continued relevance. Homes for unmarried men and women, or Ledigenheime, were built for nearly every powerful interest group in Germany—progressive, reactionary, and radical alike—from the mid-nineteenth century into the 1920s. Designed by both unknown craftsmen and renowned architects ranging from Peter Behrens to Bruno Taut, these homes fought unregimented lodging in overcrowded working-class dwellings while functioning as apparatuses of moral and social control. A means to societal reintegration, Ledigenheime effectively bridged the public-private divide and rewrote the rules of who was deserving of quality housing—pointing forward to the building programs of Weimar Berlin and Red Vienna, experimental housing in Soviet Russia, Feminist collectives, accommodations for postwar “guestworkers,” and even housing for the elderly today.

"This insightful study is a must-read for everyone interested in creative approaches to one of the major social crises of the modern age—providing decent, affordable housing for single people living on their own in industrialized cities." - Abigail A. Van Slyck, Dayton Professor Emerita of Art History and Architectural Studies, Connecticut College, USA

"German architecture rewritten from the perspective of the single men and women living in mass housing. Meticulously researched, Erin Eckhold Sassin’s book is a major contribution to the histories of modernization and urbanization and their highly gendered designs for living." - Sabine Hake, Texas Chair of German Literature and Culture, University of Texas at Austin, USA