69tionalization was entirely in keeping with a societal modernization implemented ac-
cording to the norms of an instrumental rationality.
The efforts of May and his associates were nevertheless not meant to support
a development along capitalist lines. It is clear that it was their intention to take the
rationality and functionality of the social order a stage further with the eventual aim
of transcending the existing bourgeois social order.^88 Like Giedion, they were con-
vinced that architecture could play a vital role in this social renewal, because it has
the capacity to restore the broken relationship between subjective culture and ob-
jective culture.^89 In their view the daily presence of an efficient and functional archi-
tecture would stimulate individuals to respond in a less alienated fashion to the
efficiency and functionality that are the hallmarks of objective culture.^90
The group of Das Neue Frankfurt saw it as its task to create a new culture in
the broadest sense of the word, one that would cover all aspects of social and per-
sonal life. They never actually succeeded in fulfilling what they set out to do, because
the decisive societal changes they were preparing never did occur. This was partly
due to political and social developments which took a regressive turn and made an
end to opportunities that for a short period were actually there.
These opportunities were the result of a particular phase of development in
German capitalism. After the troubled and turbulent years immediately after the First
World War, a period of stability was inaugurated in 1923 with the Weimar Republic
pursuing social democratic policies. One aspect of this policy of stabilizing the eco-
nomic and social situation was the introduction of the Hauszinsteuer, a tax on rents
that was imposed on owners of prewar real estate; due to rising inflation this tax
yielded a sum many times the original rental. A considerable part of the revenues
from this tax was spent on public housing. Nevertheless, the unprecedented rise in
construction costs in combination with soaring interest rates meant that even before
the economic crisis of 1929, the housing program in Frankfurt had to come under re-
view. The rents on new housing that were calculated on the basis of their cost price
and on the level of interest rates had simply risen beyond the means of the working
classes to afford.^91 After 1929 the flow of funds from the state for public housing was
increasingly blocked. Not surprisingly, May’s departure for the Soviet Union in the au-
tumn of 1930 coincided with the end of large-scale building operations in Frankfurt.
These circumstances have led a number of authors to interpret Das Neue
Frankfurtas a step toward imposing increasing restraints and norms on social life
rather than as an authentic contribution to the liberation of dwelling.^92 Juan
Rodríguez-Lores and G. Uhlig go into some detail on this question. They make par-
ticular reference to the paradoxical relation between an originally leftist program of
reforms and the technological battery of instruments that largely originated in, and
responded to, the logic of capitalism. The result of a reformist strategy such as
May’s, they argue, was for the working class to become better integrated in bour-
geois capitalist society, even though its original intention had been to combat this
form of social organization and to reform it fundamentally. To the extent that the un-68