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ABSTRACT
Through his work for the first Labour Government in Wellington, Austrian-born émigré architect Ernst Plischke (1903–92) was directly involved with New Zealand politics in the 1940s. While he has appeared to others as a not outwardly political person, his professional life in New Zealand was directly tied to governmental decisions of the time. Particularly his duties in the town planning division of the Department of Housing Construction (1943–1947) meant that Plischke was not only involved with the politically initiated design of large-scale environments, but in this role he also actively took sides – for a somewhat more collectivist model of living than many New Zealanders favoured. By bringing together the existing debate about housing, dwelling and in particular the Community Centre in Naenae with Plischke’s design work and his own views, it may be possible to characterise more closely his interactions with New Zealand politics. It appears that despite being an “Enemy Alien,” Plischke’s attitude towards architecture and society was largely aligned with the positions of the first Labour Government for the quality of his work to be recognised.
Acknowledgements
I thank the Kupferstichkabinett of the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna and the Alexander Turnbull Library in Wellington for granting permission to reproduce their illustrations. With respect to the figures from the Architectural Forum of 1943, all reasonable endeavours to find the copyright owner and obtain permission have been made.
Notes
1. Leonard Bell, Strangers Arrive. Emigrés and the Arts in New Zealand, 1930–1980 (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2017).
2. Diane Brand, “Ernst Plischke and the Design of Urban New Zealand, 1939–47”, in Journal of Urban Design 19, no. 5 (2014): 682–699.
3. As per catalogue raisonné, established by Eva-Maria Orosz, in Eva Ottillinger and August Sarnitz, Ernst Plischke. Das Neue Bauen und die Neue Welt (Munich: Prestel, 2003), 285ff.: Naenae (1943–47), WV 110; Epuni (1945–47), WV 122; Taita (1945–47), WV 123; Trentham (1946), WV 124; Porirua (1947), WV 133; plus not in the catalogue: Petone and Waiwhetu.
4. See Caroline Miller, Planning to House a Nation. The Life and Work of Reginald B. Hammond (Auckland: Dunmore, 2018), 113.
5. Ben Schrader, “A Brave New World? Ideal versus Reality in Postwar Naenae”, in New Zealand Journal of History 30, no. 1 (1996): 61–79, here 61.
6. Ben Schrader, “A Brave New World? Ideal versus Reality in Postwar Naenae”, in New Zealand Journal of History 30, no. 1 (1996): 61–79, here 61.
7. Schrader, “A Brave New World?”, 62.
8. Ben Schrader, “Planning Happy Families: A History of the Naenae Idea” (MA thesis, Victoria University of Wellington, 1993).
9. Chris Brickell, “Iconographies of ‘The House’ and the Political Imagination in 1940s New Zealand”, in Journal of Design History 16, no. 4 (2003): 291–306, here 292.
10. Christoph Schnoor, “Between Werkbund and wartime sobriety: Ernst Plischke’s designs for Orakei”, in Proceedings of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand: 31, Translation, ed. Christoph Schnoor, 805–816 (Auckland: SAHANZ and Unitec ePress; and Gold Coast, Queensland: SAHANZ, 2014).
11. Christoph Schnoor, “Ernst Plischke and the Dixon Street Flats”, in Proceedings of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand: 32, Architecture, Institutions and Change, ed. Paul Hogben and Judith O’Callaghan, 558–570 (Sydney: SAHANZ, 2015), here: 567.
12. Linda Tyler and Julia Gatley have devoted parts of their respective Master theses to this question: Linda Tyler, “The Architecture of E. A. Plischke in New Zealand: 1939–1962 (Master Thesis, University of Canterbury, 1986), and Julia Gatley, “Labour takes Command: A History and Analysis of State Rental Flats in New Zealand, 1935–49” (Master Thesis, Victoria University of Wellington, 1997); see also Julia Gatley, “Privacy and Propaganda”, in Interstices 4 (1996): 1–11; Robin Skinner, “Further Investigations into an Authorship: Reassessing the Dixon Street Flats Archive”, in Interstices 9 (2008): 60–74; Schnoor, “Ernst Plischke and the Dixon Street Flats”, 558–570.
13. Schnoor, “Ernst Plischke and the Dixon Street Flats”, 566.
14. Plischke, Ein Leben mit Architektur, 259.
15. Linda Tyler,” E. A. Plischke’s Tasman Memorial, 1942, at Tarakohe”, in Modern New Zealand 3 (Sept. 1995): 12–16 and 21–23. Also see Christoph Schnoor, Ernst A. Plischke. Architekt zwischen den Welten (Zurich: Park Books, 2020), 218–224.
16. Anna Plischke, letter to the family in Vienna, undated, circa mid- 1946. Private archive, Vienna. Translation by author.
17. The content of the letter also resonates with tensions on a departmental level as described by Caroline Miller in her recent biography of Reginald Hammond. See Miller, Planning to House a Nation, 113–120.
18. Ernst Plischke, draft letter to Reginald Hammond, undated, 1.
19. Plischke, draft letter to Hammond, 2.
20. Walter Gropius and Martin Wagner, “A Program for City Reconstruction”, in The Architectural Forum, July 1943: 75–86.
21. Gropius and Wagner, “A Program for City Reconstruction”, 76.
22. Plischke, draft letter to Hammond, 2.
23. Plischke, draft letter to Hammond, 4–5.
24. Plischke, draft letter to Hammond, 4–5.
25. Ernst Plischke, letter to Lucie Rie, 14 July 1946. Private archive, Vienna. Translation by author.
26. See Christine McCarthy, “Imagining Professor Plischke: Light, Plischke and the 1947 contest for AUC’s Professor”, in: Imagining…: Proceedings of the 27th International SAHANZ Conference, ed. Michael Chapman and Michael Ostwald, pp. 258–264 (University of Newcastle: SAHANZ, 2010). Also see Christoph Schnoor, “Ernst Plischke as Teacher: Wellington (Auckland) Vienna”, in: Interstices. Auckland School Centenary Issue (2018), 37–54.
27. Incomplete application form, undated, circa Sept. 1947. Plischke Archive, Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna.
28. See Greg Bowron,”Simplified and Scientific. The Firth House”, in Zeal and Crusade. The Modern Movement in Wellington, ed. John Wilson, 39–46 (Dunedin: Te Waihora Press, [1996]), and Schnoor, Architekt zwischen den Welten, 252–254.
29. Greg Bowron, “Firth, Cedric Harold”, Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, first published in 2000. Te Ara - the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/5f6/firth-cedric-harold (accessed 10 February 2021).
30. Cedric Firth, letter to Ernst Plischke, 9 July 1948. Private archive, Vienna.
31. Schnoor, Architekt zwischen den Welten, 268.
32. Ernst Plischke, diary entry, 20 November 1947. Private archive. Translation by author.
33. Ernst Plischke, diary entry, 22 July 1948. Private archive. Translation by author.
34. Ernst Plischke, letter to Lucie Rie, 29 June 1948. Private Archive, Vienna. See also Schnoor, Architekt zwischen den Welten, 266.
35. Ernst Plischke’s resignation, dated 20 November 1947, effective 31 December 1947. Plischke Archive, Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna.
36. Department of Housing Construction, General Report on State Housing (Wellington: Ministry of Works, 1943), 24.
37. DHC, General Report on State Housing, 29.
38. DHC, General Report on State Housing, 26.
39. Cedric Firth, “Architecture in New Zealand”, The Studio. New Zealand Issue 135, No. 661 (April 1948), 128.
40. DHC, General Report on State Housing, 33.
41. Ernst Plischke, draft letter to his niece, Nora Rataitz, 1957. Private archive, Vienna.
42. Brickell, “Iconographies of ‘The House’ and the Political Imagination”, 299.
43. Brickell, “Iconographies of ‘The House’ and the Political Imagination”, 295.
44. Joseph Heenan, reference for Ernst Plischke, 1947. Private archive, Vienna.
45. See Plischke, Ein Leben mit Architektur, 247; also Schnoor, Architekt zwischen den Welten, 224–229.
46. Caroline Miller, The Unsung Profession. A History of the New Zealand Planning Institute, 1946–2002 (Wellington: Dunmore, 2007), 11.
47. Miller, The Unsung Profession, 12.
48. Gatley, “Labour takes Command”, 228.
49. Cedric Firth, “Problems of Working-Class Housing”, reproduced in New Dreamland, ed. Douglas Lloyd Jenkins, 88–101 (Auckland: Random, 2005), originally published in Tomorrow, 1936.
50. Nikolaus Pevsner, “New Zealand”, in The Architectural Review, “Commonwealth 1”, 126, no. 752 (October 1959), 206.
51. See Schrader, “Planning for Happy Families”, 82 f.
52. Plischke, Ein Leben mit Architektur, 277. Translation by author.
53. Plischke, Ein Leben mit Architektur, 277.
54. Plischke, Vom Menschlichen im neuen Bauen (Vienna: Kurt Wedl, 1969), 111.
55. Plischke, draft letter to Hammond, 1.
56. Plischke, Ein Leben mit Architektur, 279.
57. Kupferstichkabinett, Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna, HZ_30906.
58. Camillo Sitte, Der Städte-Bau nach seinen künstlerischen Grundsätzen (Vienna: Teubner, 1889) / Camillo Sitte, City Planning according to Artistic Principles, trans. George Collins and Christiane Crasemann Collins (New York: Random House, 1965).
59. Plischke, Ein Leben mit Architektur, 277. Translation by author.
60. Schrader, “Planning for Happy Families”, 89–91.
61. Gropius and Wagner, “A Program for City Reconstruction”, 82.
62. Schrader, “A Brave New World?”, 72.
63. Schrader, “A Brave New World?”, 72.
64. Schrader, “A Brave New World?”, 71.
65. Bill McKay and Fiona Jack, “Living Halls: The Second World War Memorials of the First Labour Government”, in: Imagining…: Proceedings of the 27th International SAHANZ Conference, ed. Michael Chapman and Michael Ostwald, 258–264 (University of Newcastle: SAHANZ, 2010), here 277.
66. Cedric Firth and Gordon Wilson, State Housing in New Zealand (Wellington: Ministry of Works, 1949), 97.
67. William Robertson, “Final Statement” (self-published: October 1950), 84. https://library.huttcity.mebooks.co.nz/text/FinalState1/index.html
68. Robertson, “Final Statement”, 74.
69. Perhaps to add here the proviso that our understanding of “failure” is in respect to the planned vs. executed version of Naenae, whereas Ben Schrader speaks of the social failures of Naenae.
70. Plischke, Ein Leben mit Architektur, 280 f. Translation by author.
71. Hutt News 21, no. 11 (13 August 1947), 7.
72. This was later laid down in the 1949 Community Centre Act, clause (8).
73. Hutt News 20, no. 45 (21 May 1947), 7.
74. Robertson, “Final Statement”, 75.
75. Hutt News 22, no. 37 (11 March 1948), 2.
76. Hutt News 21, no. 41 (7 April 1948), 3.
77. Hutt News 21, no. 44 (28 April 1948), 13.
78. Keith Sinclair, Walter Nash (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1976), 266.
79. Sinclair, Walter Nash, 266.
80. In 1946, he had won it with 58,67%. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_history_of_Walter_Nash
81. Schrader, “A Brave New World?”, 76.
82. Hutt News 22, no. 47 (19 May 1948), 9.
83. Schrader, “Planning for Happy Families”, 115.
84. New Zealand Legal Information Institute, Lower Hutt City Empowering (Community Centres) Act 1949 (Local) (1949 No 13). http://www.nzlii.org/nz/legis/hist_act/lhceca19491949n13588/ (accessed 10 February 2021).
85. Schrader, “Planning for Happy Families”, p. 126.
86. Schrader, “A Brave New World?”, 76.
87. Schrader, “A Brave New World?”, 77.
89. Paul Moon, New Zealand in the Twentieth Century. The Nation, the People (Auckland: HarperCollins, 2011), p. 317.
90. Brickell, “Iconographies of ‘The House’ and the Political Imagination”, p. 299.
91. Brickell, “Iconographies of ‘The House’ and the Political Imagination”, 303.
92. Brickell, “Iconographies of ‘The House’ and the Political Imagination”, 300.
93. Schnoor, Architekt zwischen den Welten, 271. These numbers derive from the catalogue raisonné in the German-language version of Ottilinger and Sarnitz, Ernst Plischke. Das Neue Bauen und die Neue Welt.
94. Easton, “Sutch, William Ball”.