User:M4M3M2M1/Ernst Neufert

[could add 'criticism' section and include various texts by e.g. people in disability studies / or add this to book itself?]

In 1938, Neufert was hired by Albert Speer, who was Adolf Hitler’s General Building Inspector for the Reich Capital at the time, to oversee the standardization of Germany’s building industry. Heading the Neufert Department, he developed the "Octametric" system for rapid construction. On behalf of the Nazi Party, Neufert published a second manual Bauordnungslehre (Building Over Treatise) in 1943 which detailed his findings. The book opened with a foreword by Speer, by then appointed as Hitler’s Reich Ministry of Armaments and War Production, who wrote of the importance of standardization for “total war.” The standards developed by Neufert were deployed in Germany and in occupied states, aiding the settlement of the "Aryan" population. By 1944, Neufert’s efforts were redirected to planning the post-war reconstruction of Germany’s bombed cities. The same year, Hitler included Neufert on the "God-gifted list" as an important architect, which saved him from military action in the final stages of the war.

After the Second World War, Neufert’s career was unaffected by denazification proceedings. As he had been Speer’s Beauftragter (consultant), Neufert was not “technically” considered an employee of the state. Leveraging his connections to the Bauhaus and Walter Gropius, he secured a professorship at the Technische Universität Darmstadt. He opened his own office, Neufert und Neufert, with his son Peter in 1953 and realized numerous projects, including many industrial buildings. He died in 1986 in his home in Bugneaux-sur-Rolle in Switzerland.