THE RONGWRONG FOUNDATION / back: "alt left cursor", return to: root
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The criticism of the Soviets that Stam made cities for machines instead of places for people to live in, followed him to Makeyevka and Orsk (where he worked with his friend Hans Schmidt and his new love Lotte Beese, a former Bauhaus student with a child by Hannes Meyer). Stams last urban advice in the USSR was for Balgash, near Alma Ata.

Arriving there, he saw that the open copper mines at the site would be hazardous for the people's health. He proposed to let the workers live in Alma Ata and to transport them to the mines by train. This was considered too critical. Stam and Beese fled to the West in 1934.

Stam lost a lot of his strength and optimism. His later wife called him a 'lame eagle'. He ended as a recluse in Switzerland, constantly changing address because he did not want to be found.