In 1919 –– more than two years before the widely debated Berlin-Friedrichstrasse competition –– Max Berg publicized his high-rise visions for the city of Breslau, located some 340 km east of the capital.  They were as bold in design as they were utterly unrealistic. While Berg’s argument in favor of his monumental propositions actually was the desperate socio-economical situation of the time, young Ernst May vehemently opposed them as a belated Wilhelminism in a social guise. May, having just taken up his job at Breslau’s rural settlement association, was in turn developing simple housing schemes in the countryside. Before leaving Breslau in 1925 for his seminal work on the “New” Frankfurt, May’s activities in East Germany are more than a translation of the English garden city into a local vernacular.  They also stand for many an architect’s turn toward a modernism that would –– throughout the CIAM debates little later –– remain glued to the question whether high-rise or low-rise designs would eventually bring ‘salvation’ to the poorly sheltered masses.