Eglau, Otto

Neue Heimat Gemeinnützige Wohnungs- und Siedlungsgesellschaft m.b.H., or Neue Heimat (NH) for short, was a nonprofit construction and housing company headquartered in Hamburg, Germany. The German Trade Union Confederation (DGB) and its affiliated individual trade unions owned the company. It originated from a nonprofit housing association founded in Hamburg in 1926. After 1950, Neue Heimat developed into the largest non-state housing construction company in Europe, creating more than 460,000 apartments by 1982. The year 1998 is regarded as the end of the group's liquidation. After the expropriation of the trade union housing associations by the National Socialists, they and their housing stock became the property of the German Labor Front in 1933. In 1939, this Nazi organization established the name Neue Heimat. After the currency reform (1948), the founding of the Federal Republic of Germany (1949) and the return of the housing stocks and companies to the trade unions (1948-1955), a corporate group developed from Hamburg that was active in housing construction throughout West Germany during the post-war housing shortage. The company built housing estates in order to subsequently rent...