Alfred Reich

Alfred Reich (born April 12, 1908 in Seitendorf , Lower Silesia , † April 28, 1970 in Munich ) was a German garden architect . He was an employee of Karl Foerster and settled in Munich in 1934, where he became self-employed as a garden architect in 1948. In addition to the public sector and commercial enterprises, members of the Munich upper class of the post-war period were his clients.

Life

Origin and education

Reich's house in Untermenzing , built by Gustav Gsaenger , since 2015 Peter Gehring Museum

Reich was the son of a farmer, he grew up with four siblings. As a young boy he showed an interest in gardening; his parents gave him an area to cultivate independently. His mother encouraged his education. As a result, he was the only one of the five children to graduate from school with a secondary school leaving certificate.

Around 1924 he began his training as a gardener in the palace gardening business of the Count von Hochberg von Schloss Fürstenstein . Its garden exuded "the cheerful southern atmosphere of the Italian Renaissance ". Reich served grapes, strawberries and oranges from the greenhouses to the princely family and their guests, decorated the rooms with flowers and got to know aristocratic manners . The aristocracy and its lifestyle became for him the standard of sophistication .

From around 1927 to 1929 he worked in a cemetery nursery in Stettin .

Stays abroad

He spent the years 1929 to 1931 in Italy and in Italian-speaking Switzerland. In Ticino he worked in a terrace gardening company and got a job with Friedrich Leopold von Prussia , who lived in enormous luxury in the Villa Favorita in Castagnola on Lake Lugano . Reich worked for him as a gardener and florist . When the prince asked for chestnuts that could not be obtained locally, Reich had to get them in Milan and took a day's journey to get them.

During this time he visited gardens in northern Italy , Florence and Rome. In 1931 he undertook a two-month trip through Spain, during which he visited, among others, Barcelona , Aranjuez , Valencia , Seville and Granada . He extensively visited the Pacalio de Generalife and its gardens, the Escorial and the gardens of the Alhambra . Further trips took him to Switzerland and France with visits to Versailles , Vaux-le-Vicomte and the Parc de Bagatelle .

Work for Karl Foerster

After his return to Germany, Karl Foerster employed him as a gardener in Bornim in 1931 . Later Reich worked as a planner in Foerster's garden design department under the direction of Hermann Mattern and Herta Hammerbacher . After the planning group Foerster-Mattern-Hammersbacher the competition for the design of the German Siedlungssausstellung the model settlement Ramersdorf in Munich Ramersdorf had won, they opened a branch office in Munich. Reich moved to Munich in 1934, managed the office and supervised the installation of the facilities.

Reich later distanced himself from Foerster and his ideas, whereupon he refused to write a foreword to Reich's last book Gardens We Love (1966).

In 1936, Reich married Dela Hagemann. The marriage produced a daughter and a son.

In 1940 he was assigned to Füssen to grow vegetables for the Wehrmacht ; his wife Dela headed the planning office until 1945 during his absence.

independence

In 1948 he founded his own office for garden architecture in Munich. In doing so, he benefited from the reputation he had gained as an employee of Karl Foerster. In the same year he published his first book Gardens, nourishing and enjoyable and until 1949 he was the editor of the journal Garten + Landschaft . With the series View over the garden fence , he had his own radio broadcast on Radio Munich from 1948 .

In 1950, the couple Reich was in Munich- Untermenzing of Gustav Gsaenger a house built. Alfred Reich designed the 3200 m² garden according to his ideas, which soon attracted garden enthusiasts for visits. Reich continued to make many trips, especially to the Mediterranean, and study trips to Sweden, Great Britain and the USA. In Portugal he took a liking to streets and squares with pebble paving that he used in settlements and in his own garden.

Reich died in 1970. After the death of his wife Dela in 1998, the house and garden were taken over by the married couple Birgit Andrea Gehring and Peter Gehring. The house and garden have been listed as an ensemble since 2010. Birgit Andrea Gehring opened the building and the sculpture garden in 2015 as the private Peter Gehring Museum .

Alfred Reich's archive is located at the Chair of Landscape Architecture and Design at the Weihenstephan-Triesdorf University of Applied Sciences .

plant

Reich had acquired his knowledge as a garden architect, as he called himself, self-taught . He saw the focus of his work in creating garden art . He rejected the scientific study of his subject as a waste of time.

His main work are private gardens in Munich and southern Germany, which he was passionate about. Only a few of them have survived unchanged. In addition, he designed open spaces in public spaces .

style

In the 1950s, Reich represented the picturesque, natural garden style with organic shapes. His "Reich's saw", a wavy line, became famous. In the decade of picturesque garden pictures, Reich served the Germans' longing for Italy with a preference for patios , but deviated from the then fashionable garden elements and dispensed with elements such as kidney-shaped water basins. His plantings already looked particularly weightless, filigree and reduced.

His style changed in the 1960s to the architectural garden style, the simplicity of which was not universally accepted. In the essay Development to Clear Forms? In 1962 he presented three gardens in the orthogonal system. The article caused a sensation; the landscape architect Marketa Haist (* 1960) saw it as one of the turning points in garden design in the post-war period. With the predominance of the right angle , he wanted to bring peace and order to the garden. The demarcation to the outside was characteristic of his garden architecture. The design by water corresponded to the Moorish style with water features, pools and fountains . Reich largely avoided creating paths, preferring large, connected lawns.

Reich used an extensive range of plants and did not follow any ideology in the selection. Since his early stays in Switzerland and Italy he had a particular fondness for the plants of the south. He regretted that he had to take the harsher climate in Munich and the foothills of the Alps into consideration when planting the plants. When putting it together, he applied artistic criteria. His plant images were to implement classic models in a modern way; Plants had to be subordinate to the overall garden space. Evergreen plants were of particular importance to him, as they ensured that gardens were attractive to owners even in winter. He felt inspired by the music and looked for the duality of nature and architecture in the garden composition. In 1967 he wrote to Lorenz von Ehren : “[I] would like […] like Karajan to place the infinitely delicate next to the hardness of the strong lines. That is my conception of garden art. "

Open spaces

Lerchenauer See

Reich planned green spaces in public spaces and designed the outdoor areas of buildings. His work is the planning of open spaces in the Parkstadt Bogenhausen , the Hasenbergl housing estate , the Fasanenpark housing estate and at Lerchenauer See . He was also commissioned to plan the outdoor facilities of the Institute for Chemistry at the Technical University of Munich and the Institute for Plasma Physics.

In addition, he had large private clients from the economy. He designed the exterior facilities for Munich Re on Koeniginstrasse . He planned outdoor facilities for Siemens in Munich and other cities. In the Theatiner shopping arcade, he designed the courtyard with the three oxheart fountains.

Home gardens

Reich's most intense creative period in designing house gardens was the 1950s and 1960s. His clients came from a narrow upper class of that time with great wealth. Accordingly, Reich planned gardens, for example, for bungalows that were still built in the 1960s with a maid's room. They corresponded to the prototype of an American single-family home , which became the “acclaimed model” in the post-war period . Bungalows with gardens of 500 to 3000 m² were built mainly on the outskirts in entire settlements. Two-story hipped roof buildings were the preferred homes of Reich's more conservative customers.

Reich's extravagant appearance, his pronounced self-confidence and charisma, as well as his self-paced education attracted customers. While on the one hand he was conservative and rejected the fashionable and short-lived, his open-mindedness towards modern architecture corresponded to his garden style. For his private customers, a garden designed by Reich was a status symbol next to the house ; he himself called his gardens "sinfully expensive". You walked across the dense lawn as if you were walking over a noble carpet, splashing fountains "spoiled the ear", which included "cleverly dimensioned steps on which you couldn't help but gracefully walk". Reich furnished the gardens with terracottas from Florence, specially made swimming pools, solitary plants from North German tree nurseries and intricately laid natural stone coverings.

He did not accept potential customers whom he regarded as not being well enough. The mother of Soraya Esfandiary Bakhtiary , for whom the daughter made inquiries, did not have enough nobility for him , as he also rejected other people in the rainbow press. His customers came from the top of society, from business, politics, medicine and the nobility.

Publications

• Gardens, nutritious and enjoyable. Ideas, suggestions, pictures . Bruckmann, Munich 1948.
• Gardens that make us happy . Bruckmann, Munich 1956 (completely changed new edition of gardens, nutritious and enjoyable ).
• Gardens we love . Bruckmann, Munich 1966 (German, English).

literature

• Elisabeth Zaby: … place the infinitely delicate next to the hardness of the strong lines. The Munich house gardens of the garden architect Alfred Reich from 1950–1970 in the field of tension between classic, modern and fashion against the background of the zeitgeist of the young FRG . Publishing house Dr. Hut, Munich 2007 ISBN 978-3-89963-655-0 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Alfred Reich in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Alfred Reich's personal background . In: Elisabeth Zaby: … place the infinitely delicate next to the hardness of the strong lines. The Munich home gardens of the garden architect Alfred Reich from 1950–1970 in the field of tension between classic, modern and fashion against the background of the zeitgeist of the young FRG , pp. 30–31 passim .
2. ^ Coined by noble employers . Zaby, p. 31.
3. ↑ Zaby, p. 32.
4. ↑ Zaby, p. 31.
5. ↑ Travel and stays abroad . Zaby, pp. 32-33.
6. ^ Foerster School . Zaby, pp. 34-36.
7. ^ Alfred Reich on the website of the Karl Foerster Foundation, accessed on January 19, 2017.
8. ↑ Zaby, pp 34-36.
9. ↑ CV , Zaby, S. 284th
10. ↑ trips and stays abroad , Zaby, p. 33
11. ↑ Beatrice Härig: Art around the swimming pool . In: Monuments , Volume 26 No. 5, October 2016, pp. 30–31.
12. ↑ Zaby, p 285 AD.
13. ↑ Zaby, p. 12, footnote 1.
14. ↑ The garden is timeless . Zaby p. 62ff.
15. ^ Final consideration: Alfred Reich in his time . Zaby, pp. 218-229, here pp. 220-221.
16. ↑ Alfred Reichs Planning Principles, Zaby, pp. 48–50.
17. ↑ Reich's understanding of art , Zaby, pp. 51–53.
18. ^ Alfred Reich: Development towards clear forms? . In: Garten + Landschaft 72, 1962, no. 1, pp. 14-17.
19. ↑ Marketa Haist's life data based on the authority data set GND 172791421 in the catalog of the German National Library
20. ↑ Zaby, pp. 220-221.
21. ↑ Zaby, p. 65.
22. ↑ Planting , Zaby, pp. 159–178.
23. ↑ Zaby, S. 178th
24. ↑ Zaby, pp. 9-11.
25. ↑ Zaby, p. 13.
26. ↑ Zaby, p. 15.
27. ↑ Zaby, p. 25, quoted from: Tilman Harlander : Housing and urban development in the Federal Republic . In: Ingeborg Flagge: Geschichte des Wohnens , Vol. 5., 1945 to the present day. Construction, new construction, renovation . Stuttgart 1999, p. 276.
28. ↑ Zaby, p. 26.
29. ↑ personality . Zaby pp. 37-39.
30. ↑ Clientele . Zaby pp. 40–43, here p. 40.
31. ↑ The representative garden as a status symbol . Zaby, S, 86–93, here p. 92.