Albert Benz (architect)

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Benz's house from 1904

Albert Benz (born July 19, 1877 in Esslingen am Neckar ; † 1944 (lost, declared dead in 1959)) was a German architect and victim of the Nazi regime.

Life

Albert Benz studied at the building trade school in Stuttgart from 1892 to 1897 and at the same time completed an apprenticeship as a stone carver and carpenter in Esslingen. During his studies he also worked as a draftsman and from 1897 to 1899 as a construction manager in Stuttgart at Lambert & Stahl . In 1899 he started his own business as an architect.

In addition to a few commercial buildings, Benz mainly built villas in Württemberg , most of them in Esslingen am Neckar. He also carried out numerous conservation restorations. In this regard he proved to be a late historical , stylish imitator.

Since 1896 he has published articles on the history of architecture and culture, primarily on Esslingen. It was also the city archivist here from 1902 to 1910 . In the same year he went bankrupt after rumors of subsidence and a wall crack in a villa he had recently completed on Berkheimer Strasse in Esslingen spread. But Benz had probably taken over financially with his numerous projects.

In autumn 1910 he left Esslingen and moved to China with his wife and children , initially working for a Berlin architecture firm. Among other things, he was involved in the construction of the new parliament building in Beijing . A project that never got carried out. From 1914 to 1917 he held lectures as a professor at the Beijing Imperial University . In China, he lived and worked in several cities and built villas. The claim that he was supposed to have built the Nanjing train station cannot be verified . Rather, it is likely to be involved in the construction of the Jinan train station , which was completed in 1912 by the architect Hermann Fischer. In 1919 Benz returned to Esslingen with his family after he had been expelled from China.

When his application for the post of city archivist in Stuttgart was unsuccessful, Benz moved with his older children to the United States in 1923 , while his wife and youngest daughter stayed in Esslingen. Initially he was employed in a design office for factory architecture and later founded the Benz Construction Company in Philadelphia. In 1931 Benz returned to Germany for unknown reasons. In 1932 he built his last house in Esslingen. In 1934 he became an employee of the Stuttgart City Archives. In 1937 at the latest, he regained German citizenship.

The last few years in Prague

From 1938 he took on orders for the Wehrmacht . In May 1939 he can be traced in Melk . Months after the so-called smashing of the rest of the Czech Republic , he moved to Prague , where he studied at the German University and gave lectures as an assistant. In 1940 he can be traced back to Prague as the "head of the nature and monument protection department". But mainly he lived between 1940 and 1943 from his participation in the auction house Kaul & Benz in Zeltnergasse 13 (Celetná 13) in the Palais Caretto-Millesimo (Millesimovský palac). His partner Hanna Kaul was an art dealer and lived in Dresden. His simultaneous activity as an "art appraiser" remains opaque to the Nazi authorities who compete for looted art . In October 1942, the Gestapo in Prague suspected that he had misjudged the value of various works of art and had enriched himself. Hans Günther , head of the Central Office for the Settlement of the Jewish Question , who had held his hand over Benz to protect him, demanded in March 1943 that he be held responsible. Benz lost his permission to estimate and a little later his participation in the auction house. He resisted, turned to the highest protectorate offices and to the SS-Obergruppenführer and general of the German police Richard Hildebrandt , whom he had already met in New York in 1928. Among other things, he accused the German authorities of inaction, disorder and laziness and that they were indirectly protecting the Czechs. In September 1943 Benz was taken into protective custody, apparently for " insulting the NSDAP ". The public suspicions made a few years ago that Benz may have protested against the confiscation of the property of Jewish art collectors and maintained contacts with resistance fighters can therefore not be confirmed by the more recent Czech and German research literature.

On April 4, 1944, he was transported from Leipzig to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp on a special transport . There his track is lost. In his last postcard, smuggled to Esslingen from the concentration camp, Benz wrote that he was in good company. In 1959 Albert Benz was pronounced dead.

Buildings (selection)

Former inn "Zum Pfeffer"
  • Gasthaus "Zum Pfeffer", Pommerstr. 44, Stetten im Remstal (1902)
  • Villa with outbuildings for personal use at Berkheimer Str. 32 and 34, Esslingen (1904)
  • Villas at Berkheimer Strasse 36–52, a total of 10 buildings
  • Villa in Esslingen at Landolinsteige 3, built in 1906, house name "Burgfried"
  • Villa for Robert Vollmöller in Beilstein , called Lower Castle . Built from 1906 to 1908.

Buildings he's worked on

  • Bebenhäuser Pflegehof (facade design) (Esslingen), 1904
  • Hohenbeilstein Castle (Beilstein)
  • Franciscan Church (Esslingen am Neckar)
  • Parliament Building (Beijing)
  • Speyrer Zehnthof ( Kessler Sekt GmbH & Co. KG / 1904 / Esslingen am Neckar)

literature

  • Julius Fekete : Preservation of monuments in the 19th and early 20th centuries using the example of the Esslingen Franciscan Church. In: Esslinger Studies, 32/1993, pp. 111-163; here appendix Albert Benz (biography and selection of works), pp. 159–163.
  • Karen Schnebeck: The Footsteps of a Great Architect. How Erika Weber tries to reconstruct the story of her grandfather Albert Benz. In: Stuttgarter Zeitung . September 3, 2008, p. 28.
  • Christian Ottersbach: Castles in the air. The castle projects of the Esslingen architect Albert Benz 1903–1910. In: News about castle registration and castle research in Baden-Württemberg. (= European correspondence sheet for interdisciplinary castellology ). Volume 4, Marburg 2018, ISBN 978-3-9807558-7-0 , pp. 255-312.

Web links

Commons : Albert Benz  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Christian Ottersbach, p. 256
  2. ↑ Christian Ottersbach, p. 257
  3. ↑ Christian Ottersbach, p. 257
  4. ↑ State Archives
  5. ↑ Christian Ottersbach, p. 258
  6. ↑ Ondřej Vlk: Konfiskace uměleckých předmětů na území protektorátu Cechy a Morava 1939-1945 , Prague 2008, p 153. See Christian Ottersbach, S. 258th
  7. ^ Jan Björn Potthast: The Jewish Central Museum of the SS in Prague. Research on opponents and genocide under National Socialism, Frankfurt / New York 2002, p. 290. Cf. in detail Helena Krejčová, Otomar Krejča: Jindřích Baudisch a konfiskace uměleckých děl v protektorátu , Praha 2007, pp. 214-219
  8. ^ Ondřej Vlk, p. 156
  9. ↑ Ondřej Vlk, p. 156. See Christian Ottersbach, p. 258
  10. ↑ Stuttgarter Zeitung ( Memento from 7 July 2012 in the web archive archive.today )
  11. ↑ Christian Ottersbach, pp. 282-300
  12. ↑ Online newspaper ( Memento from December 18, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
personal data
SURNAME Benz, Albert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German architect
DATE OF BIRTH 1877
PLACE OF BIRTH Esslingen am Neckar
DATE OF DEATH after April 4, 1944