Otto Haesler

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Otto Haesler (1931), drawn by Kurt Schwitters

Otto Haesler (born June 13, 1880 in Munich , † April 2, 1962 in Wilhelmshorst near Potsdam ) was a German architect . It applies like z. B. Bruno Taut , Ernst May and Walter Gropius as important representatives of the New Building in the time of the Weimar Republic , which set impulses especially in residential construction.

Professional career before the Weimar Republic

From 1898 to 1902 Otto Haesler attended the building trade schools in Augsburg and Würzburg . During the semester break he worked as a draftsman at the municipal building authority in Passau . In 1902 Otto Haesler began an apprenticeship as a bricklayer in Frankfurt am Main . In 1903 he was employed in the office of Ludwig Bernoully in Frankfurt am Main. His field of work was the conversion and new construction of commercial buildings. In 1906 Otto Haesler started working as a freelance architect in Celle . In 1908 he formed an office partnership with the architect Karl Dreher. In 1914 he applied unsuccessfully for the office of mayor. From 1915 until his wounding in 1917 he took part in the First World War.

School in ban networks

In 1918 he began planning activities after the First World War with the design for small apartment buildings "Auf der Heese" (Carstensstrasse). Haesler evidently fell back on existing plans from the pre-war period, as a watercolor by his office partner Karl Dreher, who died in 1916, shows. The 32 terraced houses had an extended pitched roof and an eat-in kitchen, clear indications of a premodern construction method. For other individual buildings such as the school in the village of Bannetze , which is now used as the City + Space Conference Center , he resorted to a well-known design repertoire and built with a half-hip roof .

Build new

The Italian Garden Settlement in Celle , 1924/1925
Georgsgarten settlement , row building from the south

Haesler was an advocate of social housing , which gave many tenants affordable, but also improved living space. With his typification of the floor plan and the new steel frame construction , he wanted to save costs as well as create an improved form of living. His floor plans are characterized on the one hand by the orientation towards the position of the sun and on the other hand by the replacement of the corridor by a living room with afternoon sun, from which the bedrooms extend.

He rationalized and industrialized modern building. Otto Haesler was the first to use the industrially manufactured linear construction in Celle with the Georgsgarten settlement . In Celle, a development of Haesler in particular and of modernity in general can be traced using three settlements.

  • With the Italian Garden Settlement (1924/25), Haesler took up suggestions from a visit to Bruno Taut in Magdeburg. The modern design language made Haesler known nationally: "Soon after its completion, the Italian Garden was considered the first New Building housing estate in Germany."
  • With the Georgsgarten settlement (1926/27), Haesler achieved an “urban planning premiere”: the use of the “ cabin floor plan” developed by Ludwig Hilberseimer led him to an open row building . At the time, he processed current aesthetic suggestions, such as those shown by the balconies, which are apparently influenced by those of the dormitory of the Dessau Bauhaus designed by Gropius . In addition, Haesler's trademark is used here for the first time, the stairwell glazed on three sides. The cabin system was also used in the Kassel Rothenberg settlement, which he built there together with Karl Völker .
  • The planned low rents could only be realized with the Blumläger Feld settlement (1930/31). A special feature of this settlement is that each apartment is assigned a tenant garden, which can be entered directly from the 'arbors' on the ground floor. The layout of the gardens “gives the settlement the character of a garden city .” After a renovation in 2003 that was associated with partial demolition, only the second construction phase of the settlement is completely preserved. According to the municipal housing association as the owner, the entire second construction phase of the Blumläger Feld estate is at risk due to corrosion of the steel frame and it is threatened with demolition. In 2018 all tenants had to vacate their apartments.

In his office in Celle, Haesler employed three former Bauhaus students , including Katt Both as the only woman.

Memberships and public offices

Wall lettering on the Georgsgarten settlement in Celle, behind it a row of the settlement
Memorial stone for Otto Haesler on Friedrich-Ebert-Ring in Rathenow

In 1925 Haesler was appointed a member of the German Werkbund and in 1926 he joined the architects' association Der Ring . In 1927 he was accepted into the Reich Research Society for Economic Efficiency in Building and Housing (RfG). In 1930 Otto Haesler became an expert advisor on the board of the RfG. He was proposed to succeed Ernst May as City Planning Officer of Frankfurt am Main and Otto Bartning as Head of the State Building College in Weimar . In 1932 he left the Association of German Architects and in 1932 founded “heimtyp ag” (typified private homes). From 1909 to 1931 he was a member of the Celle Masonic lodge Zum hellleuchtenden Stern .

Heavily attacked by the National Socialists, he emigrated from home in 1934 . He closed his office in Celle, moved to Eutin and built houses there in the brick typical of northern Germany with formal elements that continue to incorporate modern solutions. During the Second World War he held high positions. from 1941 to 1945 he was deputy town planning officer in the occupied cities of Łódź and Lemberg . In 1943 he was involved in the preliminary planning of the Naval Service Building Authority for the reconstruction of the destroyed city of Sevastopol . In fact, Haesler came to terms with the rulers in essays on the “recovery of the German economy”, one of which he sent to Joseph Goebbels .

Haesler made himself available to the "conquest of living space in the east ". In this context, the task of architects under National Socialism was to “reorganize the German living space” as well as to loosen up and green the big city with extensive decentralization in the context of an anti-urban ideology and idealization of rural life: “New generations of racially pure Nordic farmers” should arise be settled in the country.

After the war, Haesler moved to the Soviet-occupied zone in 1946 and managed the reconstruction planning for the old town of Rathenow , where he had designed the settlement on Friedrich-Ebert-Ring at the end of the 1920s. In 1950 he was appointed professor for social housing. In 1951 he was appointed professor at the German Building Academy and was head of the Mechanization and Industrialization Department. Otto Haesler moved from Rathenow to Wilhelmshorst near Potsdam in 1953. In 1958 he married his long-time housekeeper Erna Heer.

The Otto Haesler Museum has existed in Celle since 2001 and looks after his artistic and scientific life's work. It is located in the washing, bathing and heating house of the Blumläger Feld settlement he built in 1931 .

Major works

Ebertring settlement, Rathenow
Rothenberg settlement, Kassel
Wash house in the Dammerstock housing estate in Karlsruhe

Exhibitions

  • Buildings by Otto Haesler, Kestner Society Hanover, 1932
  • Memorial exhibition in Celle on the occasion of Otto Haesler's 125th birthday
  • Models of social housing 1924–1934. December 1989 / January 1990, University of Kassel, Department of Urban Planning and Landscape Planning.

literature

  • Angela Schumacher: Otto Haesler and housing construction in the Weimar Republic. (= Cultural studies series, volume 1) Jonas-Verlag, Marburg 1982, ISBN 3-922561-16-0
  • Adalbert Behr: Otto Haesler 1880-1962. In: Institute for Urban Development and Architecture of the Building Academy of the GDR (ed.): Great builders . Berlin 1987, ISBN 3-87024-114-4
  • Thomas Dierich: The overrated model. On the importance of urban planning objectives in large housing developments. In: Ulfert Herlyn , Adelheid von Saldern , Wulf Tessin (ed.): New housing estates of the 20s and 60s. A historical-sociological comparison. Frankfurt / New York 1987, pp. 127-156.
  • Ronald Kunze (Ed.): Otto Haesler. Models of social housing 1924-1934. Exhibition catalog, Volume II on the works of the Rothenbergsiedlung and Marie-von-Boschan-Aschrott retirement home in Kassel. Kassel 1990
  • Carsten Hettwer, Monika Markgraf: Otto Haesler. Models of social housing 1924-1934. In: Ronald Kunze (Ed.): Otto Haesler. Models of social housing 1924-1934. Exhibition catalog, Volume I, Kassel 1990
  • Holger Barth, Lennart Hellberg: Otto Haesler and urban development in the German Democratic Republic in the fifties. Hanover 1992
  • Brigitte Franzen , Peter Schmidt: New building in the 20s. Gropius, Haesler, Schwitters and the Dammerstock settlement in Karlsruhe 1929. Exhibition catalog, Info-Verlag, 1997, ISBN 978-3-88190217-5
  • Simone Oelker: Otto Haesler. A career as an architect in the Weimar Republic. Munich 2002, ISBN 3-935549-15-6
  • Ronald Kunze: Rothenberg settlement. In: City of Kassel (Hrsg.): Kassel-Lexikon . Volume 2. Kassel 2009, ISBN 978-3-933617-32-3
  • Claus Schlaberg: What does Otto Haesler have to do with grammar? About Otto Haesler's contribution to modern architecture in the Weimar Republic. In: Art History. Open Peer Reviewed Journal. 2011, urn : nbn: de: bvb: 355-kuge-182-0 (accessed April 28, 2012)
  • Claus Schlaberg: For dealing with the aged rhetoric of being new in buildings of the classical modern age in a manner appropriate to historic monuments: the example of Otto Haesler's Blumläger Feld estate in Celle. In: Journal of Semiotics. Vol. 34, Issue 3–4, 2012, pp. 307–347.
  • Short biography for:  Haesler, Otto . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 1. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .
  • Folckert Lüken-Isberner: Big plans for Kassel 1919-1949 , urban development and urban planning projects . Marburg 2017
  • Eckart Rüsch: The exhibition “Buildings by Otto Haesler” in 1932 in the Kestner Society in Hanover. "... opportunity to get to know the work of one of the most competitive architects" . Series of publications by the Otto Haesler Society, Issue 3, Celle, 2019, ISBN 978-3-948087-01-2

Web links

Commons : Otto Haesler  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Angela Schumacher: Otto Haesler and housing construction in the Weimar Republic. 1982, p. 49
  2. ↑ Angela Schumacher: Otto Haesler and housing construction in the Weimar Republic. 1982, p. 50
  3. ↑ Angela Schumacher: Otto Haesler and housing construction in the Weimar Republic. 1982, pp. 204 and 209
  4. ↑ cf. Angela Schumacher: Otto Haesler and housing construction in the Weimar Republic. 1982, p. 221; Claus Schlaberg: What does Otto Haesler have to do with grammar? 2012, p. 316
  5. ↑ Angela Schumacher: Otto Haesler and housing construction in the Weimar Republic. 1982, p. 156
  6. ↑ Angela Schumacher: Otto Haesler and housing construction in the Weimar Republic. 1982, p. 156
  7. ↑ Joachim Göres: All tenants have to get out in Weser-Kurier on April 23, 2018
  8. ↑ Joachim Göres: All tenants have to get out in Süddeutsche from June 28, 2018
  9. ↑ Dagny Siebke: Bauhaus student worked in Haesler's studio in Cellesche Zeitung from June 24, 2019
  10. ↑ Harry Waibel : Servants of many masters. Former Nazi functionaries in the Soviet Zone / GDR. Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main et al. 2011, ISBN 978-3-631-63542-1 , p. 119.
  11. ^ Barth and Hellberg: Otto Haesler and urban development in the German Democratic Republic in the 1950s. An architect between social realism and real socialism. 1992, pp. 229-30.
  12. ^ Simone Oelker: Otto Haesler. A career as an architect in the Weimar Republic. 2002, p. 248.
  13. ^ Barth and Hellberg: Otto Haesler and urban development in the German Democratic Republic in the 1950s. An architect between social realism and real socialism. 1992, p. 220.
  14. ^ Barth and Hellberg: Otto Haesler and urban development in the German Democratic Republic in the 1950s. An architect between social realism and real socialism. 1992, p. 221.
personal data
SURNAME Haesler, Otto
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German architect
DATE OF BIRTH June 13, 1880
PLACE OF BIRTH Munich
DATE OF DEATH April 2, 1962
Place of death Wilhelmshorst near Potsdam