The Bauhaus architect Fritz Ertl in the construction activities of the SS 1940-1945.

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Philipp Oswalt
• Subject Area: Architecture, Building and Construction History, Construction Research, Sustainable Building Technology
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 555638126

The aim of the project is to research the role of the Bauhaus architect Fritz Ertl in SS construction during the years 1940 to 1945. Biographical, architectural and institutional analysis approaches are used for this purpose. The goal is to comprehensively determine in which roles and with which specific activities the architect Ertl contributed to the establishment of the German extermination machine. The primary focus is on the analyzing of his role in the design, planning and structural realization of Auschwitz-Birkenau. The project will systematically evaluate the relevant archive holdings in the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, in other archives in Poland, Germany and Austria, as well as holdings from Israel, Russia and the USA for the first time with this focus. In order to understand and classify the role of the architect Ertl, the historical and institutional context must be researched more closely. For which purpose the structure, working methods and social structural composition of the Zentralbauleitung der Waffen-SS und Polizei Auschwitz (Central Construction Management), in which Ertl held a leading role, are to be examined. It will be important to closely link the findings on institutional constitutions, structures and processes with the biographical, actor-centered findings. Furthermore, Ertl's plans for Auschwitz - in October 1941 he drew up the design for Auschwitz-Birkenau - and their constructional implementation will be comprehensively reconstructed. And it will be necessary to examine the relationship between his plans and other concentration camp plans under National Socialism, prisoner-of-war and colonial camps before and during the First World War, and concepts of modern urban development - and the role that Ertl's training at the Bauhaus and the functional design thinking he learned there played in his design work in SS construction. This is intended to be a contribution to Bauhaus research and the current discussion about the ambivalent relationship between Bauhaus/modernism and National Socialism. In addition to the scientific value, the applicant also hopes to gain added value in terms of memory and culture. The research project makes a contribution to the investigation of the role of architects and civil engineers in National Socialism. In a planned second funding phase, a group biography of the previously under-examined group of perpetrators of architects and civil engineers in the service of the SS, in short: "SS architects", will be drawn up for the first time using the example of the planning and construction of the Auschwitz concentration camp and placed in the context of recent research into the history of German architects in the 20th century. For this purpose, extensive work packages on post-war and reception history are planned, among other things. In order to make the research results accessible to the public, transfer projects (exhibition, app, monograph) are to be developed and implemented.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants