Читать книгу Zionist Architecture and Town Planning - Nathan Harpaz - Страница 16

Alexander Levy’s Building and Housing in New Palestine is the most comprehensive proposal for inexpensive and rapid building construction in the early days of the Zionist movement. It meticulously and methodologically reviews the most advanced European theories and studies relevant to the topic and concludes with concrete and realistic recommendations for implementation. The plan covers such topics as the role of the company in initiating and executing building construction, the crucial availability of materials, the presentation of different types of accommodations, and the utilization and standardization of materials and labor techniques.

Architect Alexander Levy (1883–1942) expressed interest in Zionism after finishing his studies in architecture and starting work for a building company in Berlin in 1907. A year later he offered his services as an architect to Arthur Ruppin (1876–1943), then the director of the Palestine office of the Zionist Organization in Jaffa. In November of 1912, Levy prepared four different housing plans for new immigrants in Palestine, and a year later he proposed to organize an exhibition on housing to be displayed during the eleventh Zionist Congress in Vienna. In the same year he also sent to the Zionist Organization several proposals for building projects, including the port of Jaffa, prototypes for residential units, housing for new Yemenite Jewish immigrants, a plan for a hotel, and a new approach to building materials. None of Levy’s proposals were accepted by the Zionist Organization.¹

In 1913, Levy applied for two positions in Palestine offered by the Zionist Organization, but he failed to obtain either of them. The position of building engineer in Palestine was given to Richard Michel and the position of the director of the technical department in Palestine was given to Wilhelm Hecker. Levy sent an angry letter to Ruppin, but he still proposed cooperation in planning working class housing. Ruppin, in his reply, explained to Levy that the difficult conditions in Palestine prevented his office from hiring architects, and he encouraged Levy to move to Palestine and practice as a private architect.²

In the spring of 1919, with the support of the Association of Jewish Architects and Engineers, Levy founded a new organization, the Association of the Builders of the Land of Israel. The goal of the association was to resolve the problems of building and housing in Palestine accompanying the anticipated mass immigration of Jews to the Land of Israel. In May of 1919, the association organized a conference on future building in Palestine, including an exhibition of plans and models of housing solutions.³ The ideas introduced in the exhibition were published with plans and photos by Alexander Levy in Davis Trietsch’s magazine Volk und Land. Levy’s essay in this magazine, titled “On Building and Housing,” spread over four issues between September and November 1919. Most of the text and portion of the illustrations of the future Levy’s book were already published in Trietsch’s Volk und Land.⁴

In May of 1920, Levy proposed another plan to the Builder Company in London to work together on the foundation of a quarry, a cement factory, a wood workshop, and machinery shops to assist with the building of 1000 small dwellings per year. This plan was also rejected. In the same year Levy continued to promote his ideas and to recruit architects to the Association of the Builders of the Land of Israel, and in Berlin he published a 56-page book entitled Building and Housing in New Palestine.

The preface to this book, “Palestine as a Living Space,” was written by Zionist leader Otto Warburg.⁵ In his opening statement Warburg asserts that the desire to turn Palestine into the homeland of the Jewish people would depend on the establishment of a consolidated Jewish community. The connection to the land would be achieved only if the Jewish immigrants owned their homes, which should be modest in size, livable, and built in consideration of the local climate.⁶

Warburg acknowledges that the massive influx of Jewish settlers in Palestine had yet to really begin, primarily because of World War I, but points out that there was nevertheless an outcry for housing within major cities. The Jewish section of Jaffa, for example, had no housing available at all. Many Jews, especially in eastern Europe, were waiting to immigrate to Palestine, and when immigration was permitted (by the British), it would be unsustainable if measures were not taken to prevent housing shortages.⁷

Warburg raises three questions: What should be built? From where would the resources for building come? and Who would finance it? He leaves the last question to the financiers and the settlers, and with regard to the other two questions recommends that engineers and artists provide the answers. He also points out that the problem was related not only to cost control, but also to finding a method of construction to accommodate the climate of Palestine. His recommendation for design urges the inclination toward the local oriental style.⁸

Warburg notes that a manual of housing options was needed to guide the new immigrants and reduce their anxiety. People who did not believe in the realization of a Jewish homeland in Palestine could examine building activities before the war, such as the public construction of the High School in Jaffa⁹ or the Technical School in Haifa.¹⁰ In addition to residential housing, new development would be needed in the cities to build facilities, not only for businesses, but also factories and workshops, as well as public buildings such as synagogues, schools, hospitals, meeting houses, administration offices, courthouses, public baths, and universities. The cities would be surrounded by gardens and affluent suburbs, and “the place … buzzing with construction activity.”¹¹

Shortage of building materials would not slow down the building as at the beginning, wood, iron, or even cement and bricks could be imported, but later local natural resources such as limestone, clay, sand, or lime could be used to produce plaster, cement, or bricks. “If our engineers, contractors, and architects manage to deal with aforementioned problems in an adequate and in such artistic manner,” assesses Warburg, “in a few decades we will be able to admire the Jewish homeland on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea, a homeland to rival all others.”¹²

In his introduction to Building and Housing in New Palestine, Alexander Levy supports Warburg’s assumption that the imminent massive Jewish immigration to Palestine called for prolific construction activity. Before World War I the land was populated by 600,000 Arabs and 100,000 Jews, and there was no surplus of housing; therefore, any influx of immigration should initiate intense construction activity.

Levy’s plan is based on five principles: Mass production of new homes for a large number of poor immigrants from eastern Europe, commissioned by the settlement’s authority; production of residential units for the more affluent immigrants; creation of larger scale developments of settlements, such as colonies, garden cities, villages, and cities, based upon a pre-approved plan, most likely for many cooperatives or groups of immigrants that have planned their immigration as a collective (such as Ahuzoth¹³); construction of public buildings: schools, administrative buildings, religious buildings, and mass transit infrastructure, including roads, trains, port construction (in Jaffa and Haifa), sewage, irrigation, and water dams; construction of buildings for industrial use, as large investments in such projects already had been made in countries such as Russia, England, America, and Palestine: factories; mines; power stations; weaving and spinning mills; oil, soap, glass, sugar, and chemical factories; vegetable and other canned food factories; jam factories; vintners; publishing houses; hotels and spa resorts (Lake Tiberias, foothills of Mount Carmel, Jaffa, coast resort of Haifa, among others); and ultimately, shopping, office, and business centers.¹⁴

The Association of the Builders of the Land of Israel was founded by a number of architects and businessmen after years of preparatory work. Its main goal was to initiate the construction of housing for new immigrants in Palestine as soon as immigration resumed. In the meantime, the association conducted preparations, research, and advertising and signed contracts with groups of local people who were planning immigration to Palestine. The association enabled these groups of immigrants to educate themselves about the field of building. The start of the operation in Palestine would be administrated by local trained specialists, who would work on the economic and scientific aspects of the project, including advertising, purchasing, and, after arrival, construction.¹⁵

The historical rationale for Levy’s plan was in the new political arena that emerged after World War I: the end of the Ottoman occupation of Palestine and the beginning of the British Mandate. In the book, Levy and Warburg expressed their hope that in the near future the British administration would permit a large number of Jewish immigrants to settle in Palestine, in which case a detailed and practical plan would be needed to construct mass housing. This prediction of a mass Jewish immigration to Palestine was triggered by the Balfour Declaration of 1917, where the British government recognized the rights of the Jewish people to establish their homeland in Palestine, and it was intensified later when the British governed the region after the war. Levy’s plan was part of post war group of publications that dealt with the expectations of a “New Palestine.” Arthur Ruppin wrote his book, The Structure of the Land of Israel, in 1919.¹⁶ In the same year Davis Trietsch published the magazine Volk und Land and his books Palestine and the Jews: Facts and Figures¹⁷ and Palestine Guide.¹⁸

Levy estimated that in the first few years tens of thousands of Jewish immigrants would arrive, and later, with the development of agriculture and industry, their numbers could increase to hundred of thousands. Levy combined the opinions of Arthur Ruppin and Davis Trietsch about the assessment of the number of Jewish immigrants who would settle in Palestine. He supported Trietsch’s estimation and believed that his mass housing plan would deal with constructing accommodations for tens of thousands of immigrants in the first few years and for a hundred thousand settlers per year later on. On the other hand, he followed Ruppin’s view that lack of economic development might derail the process and decrease the number of future immigrants. Major obstacles might surface if the pace of construction did not keep up with the rate of immigration because of undeveloped transportation, lack of local building materials, and work-related issues. This demographic estimation of the future of the Jewish population in Palestine motivated Levy to search for the appropriate solution in constructing accommodations for the new immigrants, and with such urgency he also tried to find supporters for his plan.

The fact that Otto Warburg endorsed the Levy plan and wrote the introduction to the publication is significant, as Warburg was still the president of the Zionist Organization at that time. Levy’s plan is also a direct response to Practical Zionism, of which Warburg was an avid supporter. Jacob Thon, who worked closely with Warburg and wrote a biography evaluating his career in the book Sefer Warburg, criticized the successors of Herzl who failed to reach any political solution to the Zionist cause, and he praised Warburg for his leadership in the practical wing of the Zionist movement.¹⁹

According to Thon, the political conditions in eastern Europe did not permit the establishment of the Zionist center there, and the most appropriate location that eventually was selected was Berlin, where Warburg and Levy worked. Germany at that time had a tremendous influence, culturally and economically, on the Jewish people in eastern and southern Europe. The German Jews made major contributions to the financial and industrial fields in Germany, which had a global economic influence.²⁰

American Zionist Richard Gottheil (1862–1936) also rationalized the choice of Germany as the Zionist center. According to Gottheil, “there could be little doubt to which part of Europe the move would be made … Germany was clearly marked out as the future home of the [Zionist] movement.”²¹ While Reform German Jews opposed Zionism as they were concern about dual nationality, Eastern European Jews who moved to Austria and Germany promoted Zionism. Eventually, they turned to Germany as the Zionist center and Otto Warburg of Berlin was appointed as the President of the Zionist Organization in 1911.²²

The knowledge and expertise of Warburg on the nature and the prospects of the Land of Israel are another link to the theme which Levy studied, as described by Jacob Thon:

Warburg was one of the few members of the Zionist Organization who were familiar with the Land of Israel, its natural characteristics, its plants and wild life, and its economy and political system. He was familiar with the whole Near East, and he had also a deep understanding of the Far East. He was involved in the settlement movement, which occupied the mind of German politicians, and he was also aware of settlement activities in other countries … [Warburg] developed special connections with the Jewish settlers in the Land of Israel and he was the mediator in many arguments that unfolded among them. Almost every Israeli who came to Europe found his way to Warburg’s home.²³

Warburg was attracted to the study of the Land of Israel, not only because of his profession as a scientist, but also because he promoted the philosophy of Practical Zionism through his research. He hoped to raise the perception of Zionism around the world through his scientific work. Warburg incorporated into his research studies by Jewish and non-Jewish scholars about the Land of Israel. In particular, he was interested in the studies of German researchers who had studied the region since the German Templars had settled in Palestine. These studies focused on such issues as natural resources, forestation, agriculture, meteorology, and irrigation.²⁴

In a similar way, Levy based his theory on modern European scholarship in the field of building and housing, and he supported his assumptions with studies carried out primarily by Jewish and non-Jewish German architects and scholars. Levy insisted that the principles he proposed were based on the “results of scientific and technical studies,” and that “we [the members of the association] are leaving nothing to chance.”²⁵ At the beginning of the book, for example, he presented the survey of the Copenhagen Zionist Bureau in 1919 to illustrate the decline of building construction in Palestine during and after the war.²⁶ In the same manner, Levy reported on the failure of the cement factory in Haifa as an example of the crucial choice of the proper building materials and the financial considerations involved with it. He also submitted a study that was done in Palestine in 1912 and concluded that the use of the most accessible building materials would be the best and most inexpensive solution. Levy similarly defended all his principles by submitting studies and concrete examples of implementations of different theories. By becoming an expert in the field of building and housing and through his attempt to implement his theories in the context of Zionism, Levy followed German Jewish technocrats like his colleagues Warburg and Ruppin.