In the early 20th century, Germany's first garden city Hellerau rose to fame as a prime example for an efficient and modern, yet worker-friendly life environment. Thanks to its school for somatic education and performances at the Festspielhaus, Hellerau became a center of the European avant-garde. Although the founders of Hellerau were artists, craftsmen and intellectuals, natural scientific concepts define the manifestos and descriptions of the garden city. Hellerau is described as a Versuch, an experiment and a laboratory. How did the scientific language of the experiment, one largely employed by metropolitan scientists, travel to a factory in the Saxonian countryside? How was a utopian village community fashioned as an experimental environment? And why would R. M. Rilke describe the rhythmics stage performance at the Festpiellhaus as a Versuchsstation?
Hellerau can be understood as part of the Lebensreform movement in Wilhelmine Germany, a phase that allowed for unconventional practices in seeking answers to the social question. At this time, the antagonism between techno-scientific rationalism and neo-Romantic utopianism appears to be less stark than portrayed so far. What it meant to conduct an experiment was not solely defined in the scientific laboratory in Hellerau. On the contrary, experiments were carried out in the private and in the public, in the factory and on stage. Therefore, experimental language and practice cross-fertilized and developed between artistic, techno-scientific and socio-political realms to the end of advancing modern social life.
