Into Plowshares

In wartime Germany few names were more esteemed than that of Willy Messerschmitt, Germany's brightest plane designer. When Hermann Goring used to bellow for more fighters, fighters, fighters, it was "Professor" Messerschmitt who turned them out. Allied pilots paid Willy the highest compliment: when one of them began to jerk his head around nervously they called it "the Messerschmitt twitch."

In postwar Germany, where no planes are being built (because the occupation powers forbid it), Willy Messerschmitt, after a denazification court fined him $200 and let him go, might have become a pathetic relic of the war. He was made of sterner stuff. Wherever he looked, the crying need was for more houses. Whole sections of Diisseldorf, Cologne and Nurnberg lay in rubble, and every day more refugees from the East poured in to swamp West Germany's already jam-packed buildings. Frankfurt alone this year hopes to put up 100,000 dwelling units. Quietly Willy Messerschmitt went to work.

He read dozens of books on housing, hired 20 architects, put them to work on the same drawing boards that once held his aircraft blueprints. Three months ago, the first mass-produced parts of his houses began rolling off the assembly lines. When the buildings were put up in Munich, Germans gaped with joy and wonder. The Messerschmitt houses were almost as ingenious as the Messerschmitt planes.

The houses made of steel and "foam concrete" went up singly or in six-family units (see cut). His one-family houses sold for 14,000 Deutsche marks ($4,200 at the official exchange rate). Within a few days Messerschmitt was swamped with orders.

In his old Augsburg aircraft plant, Messerschmitt last week was busy buying new machinery and adding to his original staff. The bustle reminded him of the wartime plane-building days. He is currently producing 40 prefabricated houses a month. "This is only the beginning," he said. By

September, he hopes to have stepped up his production to 300.

Says Messerschmitt: "You must conform to the needs of the times. I would rather be building planes. When the opportunity presents itself, I will."

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