Modern Country Houses in Germany – German Country Houses in Modernity (1880–1930)

Schloss Dyck. Photo: Christoph Schlemmer.

Christoph Schlemmer has analysed everyday life in German country houses between 1880 and 1930 and gained fascinating insights into how people dealt with the challenges of an ever-changing world during modernity. His recently published PhD thesis is now available.

Whether they are called ‘Schloss’, ‘Burg’ or ‘Gutshaus’, country houses can be found all over Germany. Focusing on country houses in Brandenburg, Württemberg and the Rhineland, Christoph Schlemmer tells a story of modernity in rural areas—a story told through the houses themselves, shaped as they were by people, spaces and objects. From this perspective, the book takes a close look at how country houses in Germany came to exert a unique influence on the surrounding countryside, villages and nearby cities.

Although country houses are particularly impressive from an architectural point of view, it was the everyday lives of their inhabitants that shaped their character above all else. The introduction of new technologies, the aristocracy’s struggle to maintain its social status, the decline of the domestic service system, the often conflict-ridden relationship between town and country, the modernisation of agriculture, and much more were all conceived, negotiated or contested there.

Christoph Schlemmer looks at the role country houses, with their spaces and material culture, played in the local negotiation of modernity. The study depicts modernity as an era of ambivalence and heterogeneity. Unless interactions between people in and around country houses were fraught with conflict, the aristocracy, the middle classes and the working class redefined the terms of their coexistence every day, thereby shaping the modern era in rural areas with all its achievements and dark sides.

The book draws on research traditions in rural society, the history of villages and agricultural history. The author also engages with ideas from research on the history of the nobility. In doing so, he brings together a wealth of source material on more than two dozen country houses across Germany.

The book is published in German by Böhlau-Verlag Cologne: https://www.vandenhoeck-ruprecht-verlage.com/themen-entdecken/kunst-und-architektur/architektur/60663/moderne-landhaeuser.