Alwin Seifert (31 May 1890 in Munich – 27 February 1972 in Dießen am Ammersee) was a German horticultural architect, architect, university teacher, landscape designer, local curator, and conservationist. He is considered to be one of the most important representatives of the early ecological movement and biodynamic agriculture.
Origin and education Seifert was born the son of the construction engineer and contractor Hermann Seifert. His mother Anna Sourell, who came from a Huguenot family, died while giving birth. From 1909 he studied architecture at the Technical University of Munich and completed an apprenticeship as a mason in the summer months from 1909 to 1911, which he completed in 1912 with the journeyman's examination. He completed his studies in 1913 with a diploma. He then worked as a construction technician and site manager in a Munich construction company. During the First World War he volunteered for the railway troops in 1915 and was a lieutenant at the end of the war.
After the war, Seifert took over his father's construction business, which went bankrupt during the hyperinflation in 1920. From 1920 to 1923 he was a university assistant at the Technical University of Munich with Emil von Mecenseffy and Hermann Buchert in the areas of structural engineering and agricultural construction. In 1923 he started his own business as an architect. Seifert married Maria Orff, sister of the composer Carl Orff, for the second time in 1924. The marriage remained childless.
Seifert, who was already interested in landscape and flora as a high school student, trained himself as a landscape architect, as there was neither a defined job description nor a course for this profession at that time. He was influenced on the one hand by the youth movement's understanding of nature, which he had joined as a member of the Wandervogels.Thomas Zeller: Driving Germany. The Landscape of the German Autobahn, 1930–1970. Berghahn Books, New York, NY 2007, , S. 31 f. Second, he adopted the writings of Paul Schultze-Naumburg to landscape and technology as well as the design of biodynamic agriculture of the anthroposophy of Rudolf Steiner.Thomas Zeller: Driving Germany. The Landscape of the German Autobahn, 1930–1970. Berghahn Books, New York, NY 2007, , S. 35, 39. In 1932 he got a teaching position at the Technical University of Munich, which he was able to redesign himself to later become the title "practical garden design".Thomas Zeller: Alwin Seifert. In: Neue Deutsche Biographie 24 (2010), S. 189–190
Through his work, Seifert came into contact with the homeland security movement. He became a member of the Bavarian State Association for Homeland Security and has been a member of its Small Building Committee since 1926.Thomas Zeller: Driving Germany. The Landscape of the German Autobahn, 1930–1970. Berghahn Books, New York, NY 2007, , S. 35. In 1927 he began to publish in scientific journals and made in 1929 with the essay "Thoughts on indigenous garden design" in the journal garden design attracts attention. In 1932 he took on a teaching position for garden design and agricultural construction at the Technical University of Munich, which he held until 1944.
Role in National Socialism Seifert's role in National Socialism is shaped by his own trivializing presentation, which he presented in particular in the arbitration chamber proceedings for denazification. It was refuted years later.
Early connections with National Socialism According to Joachim Wolschke-Buhlmahn and Gert Gröning, Seifert belonged to the secret Thule Society. The historian Thomas Zeller sees no evidence of this.Thomas Zeller: Driving Germany. The Landscape of the German Autobahn, 1930–1970. Berghahn Books, New York, NY 2007, , S. 45. According to Seifert's own statements, he had joined the Widar League in 1919. Possibly it was a lodge belonging to the Thule Society. There he allegedly met Rudolf Hess, though such a connection has not been proven. At least from 1919 to 1921 he was a member of the German National People's Party (DNVP). Seifert's ethnic and anti-Semitic attitudes allowed him to easily connect with Nazism.Thomas Zeller: Driving Germany. The Landscape of the German Autobahn, 1930–1970. Berghahn Books, New York, NY 2007, , S. 38.
In 1937, he became a member of the NSDAP, but later claimed that he had never been entirely in line with National Socialist ideology. Thus he adhered to the racial theory of the botanist Friedrich Merkenschlager, an early National Socialist who fell out with Walther Darré in 1933.Frank Uekötter: The Green and the Brown. A History of Conservation in Nazi Germany. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, New York 2006, , S. 78. Seifert's influence during the Nazi era resulted less from his institutional functions than from his personal connections. He benefited from funding from Hess and Fritz Todt and claimed that he lost influence after Todt's death and Hess's "England flight". The fact that he had also acted as a contact person for the anthroposophical movement made him suspicious in the eyes of the Reich Security Main Office, which had him monitored temporarily in 1941.Thomas Zeller: Driving Germany. The Landscape of the German Autobahn, 1930–1970. Berghahn Books, New York, NY 2007, , S. 39.
Reich landscape attorney In 1933 he was assigned to the staff of the commissioner (later general inspector) for motorway construction Fritz Todt, and in 1934 appointed advisor for questions relating to the integration of the landscape in motorway construction. He used this function to get in close contact with Nazi party leaders; He conducted intensive correspondence with Rudolf Hess, Martin Bormann, Heinrich Himmler, Walther Darré, Albert Speer, and Oswald Pohl. He also tried to influence the party leadership by means of polemical articles in favor of nature and the landscape. So he demanded in the polemic The desertification of Germany, to create the position of general inspector for the German water industry including a research institute. Charges were brought against him for denigrating the Reich Labor Service, but was nevertheless able to successfully position alternative hydraulic engineering methods. In 1938 Adolf Hitler awarded him the honorary title of "Professor".
On May 31, 1940, on the occasion of his 50th birthday, he was appointed "". Seifert, who became an influential advisor to Todt, gathered landscape architects, plant sociologists, and conservationists around him, with whom he tried to implement his ideas. In particular, he was instrumental in ensuring that every top construction management of the Reichsautobahn got its own "landscape attorney", who was responsible for all the relevant measures and was involved in the staking out of the motorway routes. In order to achieve his goal of a "landscape-friendly" motorway, he commissioned the plant sociologist Reinhold Tüxen to develop the area of the Reichsautobahnen plant sociologically based on Tüxen's construct to map potential natural vegetation. This mapping would serve as the basis for a natural "German" planting. In addition, he perceived steppe landscapes as "un-German" and demanded that the Eastern European areas conquered by the Wehrmacht be "Germanized" by planting field hedges. He criticized Rudolf Hess for the fact that the Nazi racial ideology was too one-sidedly “Nordic” and wanted to see an “Alpine race” included in it. In the sense of an export of nature conservation problems of the "Altreich" to the east, Seifert stated that "our Alpine lakes" (in the specific case the Tyrolean Plansee) as a training ground for the navy would have to be “spared” “as long as there is an inland lake outside Germany”. It is unclear whether Seifert was involved in the experiments in the anthroposophically influenced medicinal herb plantation of the Dachau concentration camp, where concentration camp prisoners had to do work.Joachim Radkau, Frank Uekötter (Hg.), S. 276, 297 bzw. 304
He also derived his ideas of a near-natural hydraulic engineering from his folk ideas and thus became one of the founding fathers of engineering biology . Another field in which Seifert was active was biodynamic agriculture, which goes back to the anthroposophist Rudolf Steiner.
During the Nazi era, Seifert referred to the nature prophet and pacifist Gustav Gräser, a student of the life reformer Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach, whom he portrayed in his book The Age of Living as a “herald” and “forerunner” of this same age.
Denazification process After the Second World War, Seifert's NS Ordensburg SonthofenAllgäuer Druckerei u. Verl. Anst., Kempten 1937 was placed on the list of literature to be sorted out in the Soviet occupation zone.Buchstabe S, Deutsche Verwaltung für Volksbildung in der sowjetischen Besatzungszone, Liste der auszusondernden Literatur
Seifert succeeded in the denazification process initially as a “fellow traveler”, later (1949) to be classified as “unencumbered” because he had to accept “considerable economic and professional disadvantages” under National Socialism.Sabine Klotz: »Ich selbst hatte mich nie mit den parteipolitischen Tendenzen befasst«. Fallstudien zu Entnazifizierung und Spruchkammerverfahren von Architekten in Bayern. In: Winfried Nerdinger, Inez Florschütz (Hrgb.): Architektur der Wunderkinder - Aufbruch und Verdrängung in Bayern 1945–1960. Architekturmuseum der Technischen Universität München, Verlag Anton Pustet 2005, , S. 32–43, 41 Seifert claimed that the Reichsleiter of the NSDAP, Martin Bormann, prevented Seifert from receiving a chair in 1938. He got himself influenced by anthroposophy in the early 1940sturned away from his “racial arrogance”, which was born out of his materialistic attitude and which had buried the natural instincts for the real values of a person for more than a decade. With Todt's death and Hess's flight to England in 1942, he lost his support in the regime and was massively disadvantaged as a result. His correspondence with party officials "only served scientific tasks or the defense of his professional position". In his favor it was taken into account that he campaigned for the racially persecuted and that he criticized the architecture of party buildings.
Phillip Auerbach, as State Commissioner for Racially, Religiously, and Politically Persecuted Persons, was appalled and initiated a retrial against Seifert, which ended in the second instance in October 1949 with the classification as "unencumbered". Seifert stood up for the biodynamic economy with great moral courage, spoke out in favor of Jews and politically persecuted students and accepted financial and professional disadvantages in the process.
In none of the proceedings could the party records that had been seized by the US military government be viewed . When these were finally available, it became clear that Seifert was by no means only patronized by Todt and Hess, but was in close contact with a large number of top party officials and that Himmler, Speer and Pohl had systematically advocated him.
In the Federal Republic of Germany