Gar­den City Lauta-Nord

Due to the found­ing of Vere­inigte Alu­mini­umw­erke AG (VAW) and the con­struc­tion of the largest alu­minium smelter in Ger­many at the time, as well as the con­struc­tion of a large power plant in 1917/19, many con­struc­tion work­ers and later labour­ers, employ­ees and civil ser­vants had to be housed. Thus a hous­ing estate mod­elled on the Eng­lish gar­den city was cre­ated from noth­ing in the Lusa­t­ian Heath. The devel­op­ers of the Lauta-Nord estate were the Griesheim-Elek­tron and Met­all­bank cor­po­ra­tions and the Vere­inigte Alu­minium Werke AG Lautaw­erk.

Most of the gar­den city estate was built between 1918 and 1920 on an area of 35 hectares, accord­ing to the plans of the archi­tects Clemens and Stephan Simon. Approx­i­mately 700 flats were built in 160 build­ings (one- and two-storey ter­raced houses, apart­ment build­ings, semi-detached houses and vil­las). The flats were equipped with indoor toi­lets and scullery facil­i­ties, which were ultra-mod­ern for the time. They all had a gar­den. These first mas­sive res­i­den­tial build­ings were erected in Lautaw­erk Nord in the area of Am Ring, Straße der Fre­und­schaft, Karl-Marx-Straße, Park­straße and Con­rad-Blenkle-Straße.

The gar­den city of Lauta-Nord is the largest self-con­tained fac­tory hous­ing estate in the region and is still an urban plan­ning and archi­tec­tural achieve­ment today. It is included in the list of cul­tural mon­u­ments of the Free State of Sax­ony. A num­ber of indi­vid­ual mon­u­ments have also been des­ig­nated.