Hellerau is a quarter in the City of Dresden

Dresden

Dresden is the capital city of the Free State of Saxony in Germany. It is situated in a valley on the River Elbe, near the Czech border. The Dresden conurbation is part of the Saxon Triangle metropolitan area....

, Germany. It was the first garden city

Garden city movement

The garden city movement is a method of urban planning that was initiated in 1898 by Sir Ebenezer Howard in the United Kingdom. Garden cities were intended to be planned, self-contained communities surrounded by "greenbelts" , containing proportionate areas of residences, industry and...

 in Germany.

Based on the ideas of Ebenezer Howard

Ebenezer Howard

Sir Ebenezer Howard is known for his publication Garden Cities of To-morrow , the description of a utopian city in which people live harmoniously together with nature. The publication resulted in the founding of the garden city movement, that realized several Garden Cities in Great Britain at the...

, businessman Karl Schmidt-Hellerau

Karl Schmidt-Hellerau

Karl Camillo Schmidt-Hellerau was a German carpenter, furniture manufacturer and social reformer. He is notable as the founder of Hellerau, Germany's first garden city....

 founded Hellerau near Dresden in 1909. The idea was to create an organic, planned community

Planned community

A planned community, or planned city, is any community that was carefully planned from its inception and is typically constructed in a previously undeveloped area. This contrasts with settlements that evolve in a more ad hoc fashion. Land use conflicts are less frequent in planned communities since...

. Several well-known architects participated in its construction, including Richard Riemerschmid

Richard Riemerschmid

Richard Riemerschmid was a German architect, painter, designer and city planner from Munich. He was a major figure in Jugendstil, the German form of Art Nouveau, and a founder of architecture in the style...

, Heinrich Tessenow

Heinrich Tessenow

Heinrich Tessenow was a German architect, professor, and urban planner active in the Weimar era.-Biography:...

, Hermann Muthesius

Hermann Muthesius

Adam Gottlieb Hermann Muthesius , known as Hermann Muthesius, was a German architect, author and diplomat, perhaps best known for promoting many of the ideas of the English Arts and Crafts movement within Germany and for his subsequent influence on early pioneers of German architectural modernism...

, Kurt Frick, Georg Metzendorf, Wilhelm Kreis

Wilhelm Kreis

Wilhelm Kreis was a prominent German architect and professor of architecture, active through four political systems in German history: the Wilhelmine era, the Weimar Republic, the Third Reich, and the foundation of the Federal Republic.Kreis was born in Eltville am Rhein in Hesse-Nassau...

 and Bruno Paul

Bruno Paul

Bruno Paul was a German architect, illustrator, interior designer, and furniture designer.Bruno Paul was born in Seifhennersdorf, a village in rural Saxony, in 1874. His father was an independent tradesman, craftsman, and dealer in building materials...

.

Hellerau attracted cultural visionaries from all over Europe. Among them were Émile Jaques-Dalcroze

Émile Jaques-Dalcroze

Émile Jaques-Dalcroze , was a Swiss composer, musician and music educator who developed eurhythmics, a method of learning and experiencing music through movement...

, composer, and Gret Palucca

Gret Palucca

Gret Palucca was a German dancer and teacher.Shortly after birth, her family moved to San Francisco, returning with her mother to Dresden in 1909. There she received ballet lessons with Heinrich Kröller from 1914 to 1916...

 and Mary Wigman

Mary Wigman

Mary Wigman was a German dancer, choreographer, and dance instructor.A pioneer of expressionist dance, her work was hailed for bringing the deepest of existential experiences to the stage...

, choreographers. Until the start of World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

, annual festivals attracted further members of the progressive elite of the time. In 1921, educator A. S. Neill

A. S. Neill

Alexander Sutherland Neill was a Scottish progressive educator, author and founder of Summerhill school, which remains open and continues to follow his educational philosophy to this day...

 founded his Summerhill School

Summerhill School

Summerhill School is an independent British boarding school that was founded in 1921 by Alexander Sutherland Neill with the belief that the school should be made to fit the child, rather than the other way around...

here. With the establishment of the National Socialist government in Germany in 1933, the progressive community at Hellerau ended.