Erwin Barth

Erwin Barth was a garden architect and was considered one of the most important representatives of the Volkspark movement in Germany. He finished his education at the Royal Gardener Institute in Potsdam and his first job was that of city gardener in his hometown of Lübeck in 1908. He was then appointed to the position of garden director of Charlottenburg (Berlin), and from 1926 he was the city garden director of Berlin. At the same time he taught first as a lecturer and then as an honorary professor at the Technical University Char-lottenburg. In 1929 he was named first professor of garden design in Germany at the Agricultural College Berlin.

His progressive blindness and the seizure of power by the National Socialists led to his suicide in 1933. One of the parks that Barth planned in Berlin was the Volkspark Jungfernheide in Charlottenburg. He was commissioned with the plant before World War I, but the implementation of the post-war plans did not take place until the 1920s. In 1927, the complex was completed with sports fields, a swimming pool, and children’s playground, and the opening took place in 1923. The 1928 submitted “plans of sports fields” probably come from the Jungfernheide. It is not certain if his contribution was actually exhibited in Amsterdam. He is mentioned in the catalog of German artists, as well as in other sources. His name, however, is missing from the catalog of the Amsterdam exhibition.