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Hegemann, Werner (Manfred Maria Ellis)
(b Mannheim, 15 June 1881; d New York, 12 Apr 1936). German urban planner, writer and editor. He studied urban planning, art history and economics in Berlin, Munich, Paris and Strasbourg, and at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. He took a doctorate in political science at Munich in 1908. His travels made him aware from an early date of the importance of social issues in urban planning. He organized planning exhibitions in Boston (1909), Berlin (1910) and elsewhere, and he published his conclusions in an influential two-volume work, Der Städtebau (1911–13), which led directly to the formation of Berlin’s municipal structure, the Zweckverband Gross-Berlin, in 1912; in 1920 this became the Einheitsgemeinde Gross-Berlin, an organization that survived until the division of the city in 1948. From 1913 to the end of World War I, Hegemann was in the USA, working both as a teacher and as a planner. Back in Germany, from 1924 to 1933 he edited the architectural monthly Wasmuths Monatshefte für Baukunst, which amalgamated with another periodical, Der Städtebau, in 1930. His principal critical work as a writer was Das steinerne Berlin (1930). This was not only a polemical account of the growth and architecture of Berlin but also a vigorous demand for action. Hegemann called for the abandonment of the capitalist system of land ownership and use, proposing instead a rationalization of the metropolitan structure and a transport policy based on social priorities, including an efficient high-speed rail network. He also published numerous works of literature and criticism, mainly under pseudonyms, including studies of Frederick II, King of Prussia, Napoleon and other historical figures, whose critical stance earned him the hatred of the conservatives and right-wing radicals. Deprived of his citizenship when the Nazis came to power in 1933, he went to the USA and taught urban planning at Columbia University, New York.
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