RASSCO. The Development of public housing in Israel. German-Israeli institutionality in the wake of The Haavara Treaty and the Wiedergutmachung (1933 to 1973).

• Applicants: Dr. Ines Sonder; Dr.-Ing. Joachim Trezib
• Subject Area: Architecture, Building and Construction History, Construction Research, Sustainable Building Technology ; Asian Studies ; Modern and Contemporary History ; City Planning, Spatial Planning, Transportation and Infrastructure Planning, Landscape Planning ; Economic and Social History
• Term: from 2015 to 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 284415754

The foundation of the RASSCO (Rural and Suburban Settlement Company) in 1934 constituted a milestone in the development of the built-up environment of Jewish Palestine and the future State of Israel. Initiated by the German Department of the Jewish Agency, the RASSCO came to be a decisive instrument for the settlement and integration of German Jews driven into exile by Nazi recriminations, its model being the so-called middle-class settlement with supplementary income infrastructures. Its success in integrating the immigrants was - and still is by todays standards - outstanding. Operations of the company were directly linked to the so-called Haavara Treaty (1933) concluded between the German Reich, The Jewish Agency and the Zionist Organization of Germany; by its regulations, enormous flows of commodities and capital were channeled to Palestine. Especially the building sector of the country underwent a substantial boom: new instruments of capital accumulation, new methods of building standardization and an integrative planning of settlement and regional development were introduced. The activities of the RASSCO proved to have a prototypical function for the settlement and development policy of the State of Israel. Even after 1948, it retained a defining role within the national building production. Among the large-scale projects realized were the project planning and extension of the National Water Carrier, numerous agricultural settlements, residential neighbourhoods and communal facilities in the urban agglomerations as well as a multitude of major individual projects highly significant for the architectural culture in the country, such as the Eretz Israel-Museum and the Shalom Meir-Tower in Tel Aviv. Through its institutional and personnel interweavements, the RASSCO was closely integrated in the process of the German-Israeli rapprochement in the course of the so-called Wiedergutmachungsabkommen of 1952 and contributed to a large extent to the stabilization of economic relations between the FRG and Israel. The development of the RASSCO represents as institutional history an eminent part of German-Jewish respectively German-Israeli history in the 20th century; moreover, its building production represents a longitudinal section through the heroic phase of architectural modernism as it is characteristic in its specific form for the Zionist nation building between its initial years and the 1970s. The aim of the research study is to explore for the first time the institutional history of the RASSCO within a broad perspective of trans-disciplinary socio-economic, institutional and personal factors of influence and knowledge transfer, to grasp ist fundamental contribution for the development of public building in Palestine/Israel and to document its activities within the frame of a representative catalogue of oeuvres as well as in the context of the building production in Israel at large and international comparative examples.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Austria, Israel
• Cooperation Partners: Professor Dr. Harald Bodenschatz; Professor Zvi Efrat, Ph.D.; Privatdozent Dr.-Ing. Ulrich Knufinke; Professor Dr.-Ing. Klaus Tragbar; Professor Dr. Max Welch Guerra