Germany’s rapid industrialization since the middle of the nineteenth century also fueled exponential urban growth, as rural workers moved into cities in search of better-paying jobs. The city of Essen, in the heart of the steel-producing Ruhrgebiet, offered a striking example of this development: Within just thirty-five years, Essen's population grew nearly six-fold – from just around 50,000 in 1875 to almost 300,000 people by 1910. Housing and infrastructure did not even begin to keep pace with accelerating demand, and most working-class city dwellers squeezed into cramped tenements, without adequate sanitary facilities, ventilation, or sunlight. The physical health and social well-being of inhabitants suffered accordingly.

The worsening nature of urban living spurred a number of reform programs in the Weimar Republic, some of the most influential of which stemmed from the Bauhaus, the innovative art-and-design school launched by the architect Walter Gropius (1883–1969) in the city of Weimar in 1919. Bauhaus architects designed buildings to maximize natural light and air, and they sought to reduce costs by using prefabricated elements. In 1926, the planned settlement of Dessau-Törten became Germany's first housing project designed according to the school's standards. That same year, Hermann Becker, the director of the Humboldt Film company, produced a four-part documentary film titled Wie wohnen wir gesund und wirtschaftlich? [How can we live healthily and economically?], inspired by one of Gropius’s lectures. Gropius himself cooperated with the film’s production, seeing it as a great way to popularize the Bauhaus’s innovative housing ideas. The first part of the film, shown here and subtitled “Housing Shortage,” focuses on the inhumane living conditions of urban workers. The footage shows dilapidated tenements, claustrophobic backyards, lightless apartments, and the overcrowded quarters of a homeless shelter. It also dramatizes—in scripted scenes with actors— the purported consequences of such living conditions:  crime, alcoholism, and violence. Intertitles offer statistics to back up the film’s explicit and implicit claims regarding the extent and consequences of Germany’s housing shortage.