Guided walk

If you leave the centre of Neuruppin and head eastwards across the Ruppiner lake, on the opposite bank you will find the urban district of Gildenhall on your left. The Freiland-Siedlung [i. e. outdoor settlement] is founded by Georg Heyer, the master builder and master carpenter from Berlin, who buys an abandoned brickyard and all of its surrounding lands on the Ruppiner lake in 1920 and establishes a saw mill and a carpentry workshop as well as a house for himself.


In 1922 according to a land-use plan by Max Eckhard, a facility is created on Blumenstraße with two parallel Reihenhauszeilen  1  each with one interruption, with a lavish communal courtyard and small front gardens. Cube-shaped houses with hipped roofs, that were reserved for the master craftsmen, round off the four-lane complex at the ends. A freestanding front building, which was built in 1925/26 according to plans by Adolf Meyer, comprises the northern end of the Blumenstraße. Meyer, who comes to Gildenhall after the closing of the Bauhaus in Weimar in 1925, continues construction on the settlement with two further opposing lines of row houses south of the two timber- frame duplexes.

His most striking building in Gildenhall is the Ausstellungs- und Bürogebäude Hermsdorfer Weg 1 [i. e. Exhibition and Office Building]  2  that was planned in 1925. In 1926/27 the renovation of the building takes place according to plans by Heinrich Westphal. Later additions tarnish the character of the building, but the functional, austere style of the Bauhaus architecture is still clearly recognisable.



An additional section of the settlement is developed in 1927 in Gildenhaller Allee  3  . There Heinrich Westphal builds more settlement houses for the craftspeople. The claim to unite high craftsmanship standards and serial production cannot be maintained in this economically challenging time:
the recession of the global economic crisis puts an end to the ambitious settlement utopia.



In old Ruppin, Heinrich Westphal builds a Schule  4  , whose style is completely committed to the objectivity of the Bauhaus- Modern architectural style. It is considered an outstanding testament to the creative work by Heinrich Westphals and as a major work in the style of the “Neues Bauen“ in the region.




A visit to theMuseum Neuruppin [i. e. Gildenhall Exhibiton in the Neuruppin museum; address and business hours see below]  5  rounds off your guided walk through Neuruppin.