Alwin Seifert (31 May 1890 in Munich – 27 February 1972 in Dießen am Ammersee) was a German horticultural architect, architect, university teacher, landscape designer, local curator, and conservationist. He is considered to be one of the most important representatives of the early ecological movement and biodynamic agriculture.
Origin and education
Seifert was born the son of the construction engineer and contractor Hermann Seifert. His mother Anna Sourell, who came from a Huguenot family, died at birth. From 1909 he studied architecture at the Technical University of Munich and completed an apprenticeship as a mason in the summer months from 1909 to 1911, which he completed in 1912 with the journeyman's examination. He completed his studies in 1913 with a diploma. He then worked as a construction technician and site manager in a Munich construction company. During the First World War he volunteered for the railway troops in 1915 and was a lieutenant at the end of the war.
After the war, Seifert took over his father's construction business, which went bankrupt during the hyperinflation in 1920. From 1920 to 1923 he was a university assistant at the Technical University of Munich with Emil von Mecenseffy and Hermann Buchert in the areas of structural engineering and agricultural construction. In 1923 he started his own business as an architect. Seifert married Maria Orff, sister of the composer Carl Orff, for the second time in 1924. The marriage remained childless.
Seifert, who was already interested in landscape and flora as a high school student, trained himself as a landscape architect, as there was neither a defined job description nor a course for this profession at that time. He was influenced on the one hand by the youth movement's understanding of nature, which he had joined as a member of the Wandervogels. Second, it rezipierte the writings of Paul Schultze-Naumburg to landscape and technology as well as the design of biodynamic agriculture of the anthroposophy of Rudolf Steiner. In 1932 he got a teaching position at the Technical University of Munich, which he was able to redesign himself to later become the title "practical garden design".
Through his work, Seifert came into contact with the homeland security movement. He became a member of the Bavarian State Association for Homeland Security and has been a member of its Small Building Committee since 1926. In 1927 he began to publish in scientific journals and made in 1929 with the essay "Thoughts on indigenous garden design" in the journal garden design attracts attention. In 1932 he took on a teaching position for garden design and agricultural construction at the Technical University of Munich, which he held until 1944.
Role in National Socialism
Seifert's role in National Socialism is shaped by his own trivializing presentation, which he presented in particular in the arbitration chamber proceedings for denazification. It was refuted years later.
Early connections with National Socialism
According to Joachim Wolschke-Buhlmahn and Gert Gröning, Seifert belonged to the secret Thule Society. The historian Thomas Zeller sees no evidence of this. According to Seifert's own statements, he had joined the Widar League in 1919. Possibly it was a lodge belonging to the Thule Society. There he allegedly met Rudolf Hess, though such a connection has not been proven. At least from 1919 to 1921 he was a member of the German National People's Party (DNVP). Seifert's ethnic and anti-Semitic attitudes allowed him to easily connect with Nazism.
In 1937, he became a member of the NSDAP, but later claimed that he had never been entirely in line with National Socialist ideology. Thus he adhered to the racial theory of the botanist Friedrich Merkenschlager, an early National Socialist who fell out with Walther Darré in 1933. Seifert's influence during the Nazi era resulted less from his institutional functions than from his personal connections. He benefited from funding from Hess and Fritz Todt and claimed that he lost influence after Todt's death and Hess's "England flight". The fact that he had also acted as a contact person for the anthroposophical movement made him suspicious in the eyes of the Reich Security Main Office, which had him monitored temporarily in 1941.