Bernhard Pfau

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Atelierhaus Bernhard Pfau after its renovation
Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus
Youth center in Düsseldorf

Bernhard Mathäus Pfau (born June 1, 1902 in Wolfach ( Baden ); † July 30, 1989 in Düsseldorf ) was a German architect and specialist author .

Life

Bernhard Pfau was born on June 1, 1902 in Wolfach as the third of five children of Bernhard Pfau and his wife Katharina. The father was a beer brewer and later ran a restaurant. In 1908 Pfau started primary school, in 1912 he switched to secondary school. Peacock started drawing and painting early. In addition, he received violin lessons from a soldier in the French occupation army. His lifelong enthusiasm for this instrument gave him the foundations for the “musicality of building” (Pfau), which he got to know and appreciate during his later stay in Vienna .

In the autumn of the war year 1916, Pfau began studying at the Mainz School of Applied Arts. When his father died in 1918 and his family broke up, Pfau - now completely penniless - had to finance his studies as a standing violinist or with odd jobs . During his studies, Pfau became aware of the work of Bruno Paul . Paul came to Berlin in 1907 as the director of the teaching establishment of the Kunstgewerbemuseum and was considered one of the leading furniture designers of his time, but also worked as an illustrator for the magazines “ Jugend ” and “ Simplicissimus ”. Pfau applied to Bruno Paul and was accepted into his studio in 1921. According to his own statements, Pfau learned a “sense of simplicity, proportion and technical and handcrafted cleanliness” in Paul's studio. After two and a half years, Pfau left Paul's studio, worked for Hermann Muthesius for a short time , traveled to Italy and Switzerland - he spent the winter of 1923/1924 in Bern and Gunten on Lake Thun - before settling in Vienna for two years in 1924 . Here he got to know the buildings of Otto Wagner - the leading architectural personality of Vienna - and worked for Josef Frank , Josef Hoffmann , Ernst Lichtblau and Walter Sobotka .

After his stay in Vienna, Pfau worked in a planning office for ship interiors in Bremen . There he was noticed by Emil Fahrenkamp , who then brought him to his office in Düsseldorf . In 1927 he married the artist Lotte Fink (born Katharina Theresia Anna Fink, born October 12, 1898 in Vienna; † January 17, 1984 in Düsseldorf-Wittlaer ) with whom he carried out numerous joint works (e.g. interior design of the Café Monopol in Cologne ).

1930-1944

In 1930 Bernhard Pfau started his own business in Düsseldorf. The Kaiser house (for the coffee wholesaler Walter Kaiser) was one of the first houses that Pfau built at the beginning of his independence. In 1930 the optician Gustav Ziem (1856–1936) awarded Pfau the order for a residential and commercial building on Hindenburgwall (today: Heinrich-Heine-Allee ). Pfau himself lived in " Haus Ziem " from 1931 to 1934. His office was housed there until after the war.

With the “ seizure of power ” by the National Socialists in January 1933, Pfau also got caught up in political developments. A large number of his clients were Jewish and thus exposed to the Nazi terror. But Pfau's immediate environment was not spared from the Nazis' "purges". Artists from the circle of the Düsseldorf art dealer “ Mutter Ey ”, who belonged to the avant-garde artist associations “ Das Junge Rheinland ” or “ Rheinische Sezession ”, were defamed as “ degenerate ”. Pfau, at that time chairman of the "Rhenish Secession", was deposed.

Only a few days after the “ Enabling Act ” was passed (March 23, 1933), the Nazis grabbed the Düsseldorf Art Academy . Academy director Walter Kaesbach was chased out of office, but other artists such as the sculptor Jupp Rübsam - one of Pfau's very first builders - or Professors Paul Klee and Ewald Mataré were sacked. Relevant for Peacock professional associations such as the Association of German Architects (BDA) and the German Werkbund were still in the course of 1933 " brought into line ". With the formation of the Reich Chamber of Fine Arts (RKbK) within the Reich Chamber of Culture belonging to Joseph Goebbels Propaganda Ministry , he became a member there. Failure to join the Reich Chamber - or discharge from it - amounted to an occupational ban , as the membership number had to be stated on all drafts. Despite his accession, Pfau was spied on by the Gestapo and his wife interrogated. In order to evade the growing control of public and private life in the city, he built a house for his family in rural Düsseldorf-Wittlaer in 1934 .

After 1934, the focus of Pfau's activity was initially on the construction of inner-city rental houses, shops and their equipment (interiors).

Gerhard Fieseler , who was initially only looking for an architect for his new house, commissioned Pfau with the planning and implementation of Plant II for Fieseler-Flugzeugbau GmbH . After the Nazis came to power, Fieseler-Flugzeugbau GmbH had developed into one of the most important companies in the Kassel area with around 5,300 employees thanks to numerous armaments contracts . In addition to the construction of Plant II - along with the Kameradschaftshaus as the centerpiece of the plant - Pfau was given the task of considerably expanding a plant settlement that had been in existence since 1935 in several construction stages for the steadily growing number of workers - around 280 small settler houses were to be built by the end of 1940. The various areas of life of the Fieseler workers should be covered as completely as possible: work in halls made of steel and glass that are optimally conditioned for production, lunch break in the prescribed cosiness of the comradeship house, living in the petty-bourgeois, romanticizing idyll of the small settlers' houses. Fieseler-Flugzeugbau GmbH was awarded a NS model company in 1938 for implementing these ideas .

After the completion of the facilities, he began planning for the National Socialist Air Corps (NSFK) - a division of the NSDAP subordinate to the Reich Aviation Ministry . He was busy with this work - workshop building, glider hangar and warehouse in the Eifel ( Schaephuysen , Schwerfen ), in the Oberbergisches Land , Bonn , Krefeld and Duisburg- Walsum - until the end of 1941. He was then drafted into the Air Force as a "private architect" and thus escaped a draft notice. Until 1944 it was used within the field construction management to camouflage the air force systems in Creil (north of Paris ) and in Mont-de-Marsan (not far from the Spanish border). He maintained an office with several German employees. The work was carried out by forcibly recruited French and Moroccans.

1944-1949

After the Allies landed , Pfau was arrested by the " Forces françaises de l'intérieur " (FFI) near Paris on suspicion of espionage, initially in the internment camp at Charenton-le-Pont , in 1944 this was the Fort de Charenton for political prisoners , then - on January 8, 1945 - taken to the internment camp in Drancy , where he remained in custody until February 23, 1945. However, he was then exonerated, dismissed and from early 1946 worked for the French Ministry of Reconstruction. The resulting travel opportunities to the British and French occupation zones enabled him to keep in contact with his office in Düsseldorf. At the same time he worked as a salaried architect for the architect Maxime Verdeaux in Melun , realized smaller projects in Paris and the surrounding area. The largest project at this time was an industrial building for the PPK company in Paris-Courbevoie.

Pfau applied for membership in the French professional organization for architects in May 1947, but this was rejected. He made plans to emigrate to the USA , made contact with his former teacher Walter Sobotka , who - emigrated from Austria in 1938 - had settled in Pittsburgh , and with Richard Neutra in Los Angeles . These plans and the attempt to emigrate to Brazil did not lead to any concrete result. When plans for a collaboration with the French architect Marcel Lods , who in 1947 had been commissioned by the French military government to draw up a general development plan for the city of Mainz , came to nothing, Pfau decided to turn his back on France.

1949-1960

In April 1949 Pfau returned to Düsseldorf with his new partner Simone Baillon and their two children, who were born in France. The immediate trigger for the return was probably an order from the glass industry for a new administrative headquarters (" House of the Glass Industry "), with which he achieved great - also international - recognition. At that time Düsseldorf was one of the cities in Germany most severely damaged by the effects of the war. 38 percent of the living space had been destroyed, 85 percent of the buildings in the city center were no longer available or damaged, the old town was almost completely destroyed, so that rubble removal, the restoration of the infrastructure, and the supply of the population with housing, food and fuel were initially completely were in the foreground. A ray of hope with regard to the future of the city, however, was the fact that in 1946 Düsseldorf was designated the state capital for the North Rhine-Westphalia newly formed by the British occupation authorities from the former provinces of North Rhine , Westphalia and the former state of Lippe , and to be expected was that the city - already the administrative center of the Ruhr industry, seat of major banks and the Rheinisch-Westfälische Börse - would soon become attractive as the new state capital and seat of government for other leading business and interest groups.

The Düsseldorf architectural dispute

Pfau soon discovered, however, that central positions in the area of ​​urban planning and development were already occupied by architects who had worked in prominent positions in the Third Reich , but who - supported by a network of connections and personal relationships - had an almost seamless continuation their activity seemed to succeed.

The key figure here was Friedrich Tamms , who had already started working as head of the Düsseldorf planning office in April 1948. His concepts for the urban reorganization of Düsseldorf were based on ideas that had already been developed in the Third Reich from October 1943 for the reconstruction of German cities (in the “ Reconstruction Planning Task Force ” at the “ General Building Inspector for the Reich Capital ” (GBI) Albert Speer ).

This was increasingly criticized by young Düsseldorf architects who gathered around Pfau. On October 27, 1949, a group of ten formed the “ Düsseldorfer Architektenring ” in order to get their criticism to be heard. Besides Bernhard Pfau - as primus inter pares - members of the "Ring" were W. Brink, G. Benninghofen, Josef Lehmbrock , W. Plücken, H. Plum, Kurt Schweflinghaus, E. Stelmaczyk, Alfred Vietze, B. Weil (in the official registration as an association of January 21, 1950 have taken the place of Alfred Vietze and B. Weil Louis Schoberth and Maximilian Reisinger ).

In December 1949 they drafted a basic program in which it was stated that the focus of urban planning should not be on a design requirement, but on living people with all their needs. In the Baurundschau 23/1949 they formulated their principles:

“The essential principles: requirements of the individual, the milieu based on the character of a city, and thus also the location, also the climate, which determines the organization of the apartments and open spaces as well as the connection with the surrounding landscape, the functions of a Flat-sharing communities, which have an impact on administration, workplaces and places of recreation and culture, etc., especially traffic movements and overall appearance, are the basis of any urban planning. Today's urban planning cannot be limited to the new edition of corridor streets. (...) A city formed with all its might need not consist of high-rise buildings alone. It develops from the wonderful contrast between low and high buildings, from the usual street shapes and open traffic routes with recessed open spaces, between pedestrian paths untouched by traffic and crossings that pedestrians do not enter. (…) Virtually nothing of these principles can be seen in Düsseldorf's urban planning. The most beautiful open spaces are reserved for parking spaces instead of high-rise or underground garages. Traffic must develop as if there were no pedestrians in the future. The attempt to create a cultural center and a city has not been made at all. "

In particular in the intended new traffic routing by the "Düsseldorf breakthrough planner", which provided for brutal cuts in historically grown districts, the critics recognized the "axis fetishism" that was already sufficiently propagated in the Nazi era (see, for example, the plans for the new " world capital Germania ") .

As an alternative to Tamms' plans, the Architektenring developed a "hierarchical ring road development " with three concentric ring roads and the formation of traffic-calmed districts. On April 24, 1950, this alternative was presented to the public in the premises of the Deutscher Werkbund. The hoped-for effect on the city's decision-making bodies did not materialize, however; on April 28, 1950, Friedrich Tamm's plans were adopted as a “reorganization plan” for Düsseldorf.

As a result, the criticism of the architects' ring around Pfau became more massive or more detailed. One now dealt with the origin of the individual plans of the Tamms draft, which was rooted in the Nazi era, and also with the past of the architects who were repeatedly provided with public contracts due to their good relationships. The personnel interweaving and relationships of these architects, some of whom had known each other since their student days, were then dealt with in the office of the " General Building Inspector for the Reich Capital" (GBI), Albert Speer, or in the one created since October 1943 - "Reconstruction Task Force" for the cities destroyed in the war - came together and maintained this network through the collapse of the so-called Third Reich.

According to the architects' ring, Düsseldorf was a “center of former Nazi celebrities”. When on January 1, 1952 Julius Schulte-Frohlinde , who as head of the construction office of the German Labor Front had implemented projects by Robert Ley and, among other things , had converted Erwitte Castle in Westphalia into a Nazi training castle, was appointed director of the Düsseldorf Building Department, the Architektenring issued a statement (statement on the filling of the building director's position in Düsseldorf in February 1952) :

“Among the big cities in Germany, Düsseldorf has the sad fame of harnessing these cultural peaks of the system of that time in its development work. The point here is not to put a person on trial because of their membership of the party or other organization, but rather whether we have recognized how deeply the National Socialist idea of ​​building culture differs from that of democracy. The building lions of the party buildings have not changed in their building attitude. If they are old enough, they already had this attitude before Hitler appeared and will not shed it today either. Wouldn't it be better, when redesigning our cities, to make use of those men who had to emigrate or go underground when Hitler came, and whose cultural-political past leaves no room for doubt? The list of the Germanic cultural knights before us who are active in or for Düsseldorf frightens us very much. We see this as a symptom of our time and would like to prevent this clique from pushing its way back into leading positions by rehabilitating the unfortunate denazification process . We therefore protest against the fact that the builder of the Nazi training castle Erwitte and creator of the Nazi party rally grounds , Professor by Hitler's grace, Schulte-Frohlinde , should direct the fortunes of the Düsseldorf building administration. " (Quoted from: Werner Durth 1986/2001, p. 298)

In addition to Friedrich Tamms and Julius Schulte-Frohlinde, other architects and urban planners with a "brown past" were named in the statement:

The architects' ring carried out signature campaigns and sought support at home and abroad. He found broader consensus when, in the summer of 1950, Julius Schulte-Frohlinde was given the planning for the expansion of the Düsseldorf City Hall without competition and his draft, which then went public, made it clear that he still felt closely connected to the structural ideals of National Socialism ( "Düsseldorf Classicism Triumphs - Why Restorative Building in a Progressive City?" In: Düsseldorfer Nachrichten of March 6, 1952).

Now the Association of German Architects, the “ Rheinische Sezession ”, the German Werkbund and the Düsseldorf Architects and Engineers Association have appeared, and together with the Architects' Association, a joint declaration of objection to the new town hall in Düsseldorf has been published . All attempts to influence the urban development of the city and the associated continuity of the staff had no effect, on the contrary: the architects of the Düsseldorfer Architektenring were practically ostracized and no longer considered in the future award of public contracts. Pfau himself did not receive a single commission from the city of Düsseldorf.

In October 1952, Der Spiegel quotes a mockery that was circulating at the time in a report on the background and personnel-political interrelationships of urban development in Düsseldorf:

Every beginning is the brick
And then later the cement
But nothing holds together like that
Like a clique that knows each other.

buildings

Ziem office building (1930–1931)
House Peacock (1934)
Vogelsang House (1949–1950)
House Kaiser II (1952–1953)
House Nakatenus (1954–1955)
Atelierhaus Pfau (1956–1958)
  • before 1930: Otto Ditzen jewelry store, Düsseldorf
  • before 1930: Photo shop Leistenschneider, Düsseldorf
  • before 1930: shop of the Rosenthal porcelain branch, Düsseldorf
  • before 1930: Dr. C., Cologne
  • before 1930: apartment L., Cologne
  • 1929–1930: Laden oha, Düsseldorf
  • 1929–1930: Renovation of Dr. Loeb, Düsseldorf
  • 1930–1931: House (Walter) Kaiser (House Kaiser I), Viersen
  • 1930–1931: Ziem residential and commercial building , Düsseldorf location
  • 1931: Hartoch department store, Düsseldorf
  • 1931: Dr. M., Unna
  • 1931: Home furnishings Dr. M., Düsseldorf
  • 1931: Dr. Sch., Düsseldorf
  • 1932–1933: Beethovenstrasse apartment building, Düsseldorf
  • 1933: "Schmuckkasten" shop, Düsseldorf (with Lotte Fink-Pfau)
  • 1933: Two-family houses on Wittelsbachstrasse, Düsseldorf
  • 1933: Reeg apartment building, Düsseldorf
  • 1933–1934: Multi-family house Dr. Heuveldopp, Düsseldorf
  • 1933–1935: Leistenschneider residential and commercial building, Düsseldorf
  • before 1934: house in Mehlem
  • before 1934: weekend house on the Rhine
  • 1934–1935: Haus Pfau, Am Mühlenkamp 9, Wittlaer Lage
  • 1936: Factory settlement of Fieseler-Flugzeugbau GmbH , Kassel
  • 1936–1937: Gerhard Fieseler's house , Kassel-Wilhelmshöhe
  • 1936–1937: Schlick House, Düsseldorf
  • 1937: Room of the velvet and silk industry and hall of the glass show in the Reich Exhibition of Creative People
  • 1936–1938: Pressehaus Düsseldorf (with Lotte Fink-Pfau)
  • 1936–1938: Plant II of Fieseler-Flugzeugbau GmbH, Kassel
  • 1936–1942: WK furniture programs
  • 1937–1938: Debro-Werke Paul de Bruyn KG, Düsseldorf
  • 1938–1940: Administration building of "Türkiye Seker Fabrikalari AS", Eskişehir and Ankara
  • 1939: Residential buildings on the Bosporus, Istanbul
  • 1939: A. Himmelreich factory, Porz am Rhein
  • 1940–1942: Noll company building, Düsseldorf
  • before 1940: Dr. D. in Essen
  • 1947: PPK factory, Paris-Courbevoie
  • 1947: Hotel Bouvier, Melun
  • 1948–1951: House of the Glass Industry , Düsseldorf, Couvenstrasse 4, location
  • 1949–1950: Vogelsang House, Krefeld location
  • 1949–1951: Döreln residential and commercial building, Essen
  • 1950: Reconstruction of the United Glass Works ( Vegla ), Aachen
  • 1950–1951: Dr. Herrmann in Gelsenkirchen-Buer , Cranger Str. 84 location
  • 1950–1961: own house and studio , Stephanienstraße 26, Düsseldorf
  • 1951–1958: Textile engineering school with textile research institute (today: German Textile Research Center North-West eV), Krefeld Lage
  • 1951–1958: Jochum & Jungmann tie factory in Krefeld
  • 1952–1953: House (Walter) Kaiser (House Kaiser II), Viersen, Burgstrasse 6, location
  • 1952/1953: Freiherr-vom-Stein-Haus, Düsseldorf
  • 1952–1954: Jugendhaus Düsseldorf , Düsseldorf
  • 1952–1956: Multi-family house Dr. Heuveldopp, Düsseldorf
  • 1954-1955: House Nakatenus , Dusseldorf-Niederkassel (since 2004 listed building) location
  • 1954–1957: Office and factory building Fa. Himmelreich, Porz
  • 1954: Landhaus M. in Düsseldorf
  • 1954: House of a doctor in Duisburg
  • 1955–1956: Schupp House in Cologne
  • before 1956: Weinhaus Dahlem in Duisburg
  • 1956–1958: Atelierhaus Pfau in Düsseldorf, Stephanienstraße 26 Lage
  • 1957: House K. in Cologne
  • 1957: Design for two-storey single-family houses at Interbau 1957 in the Hansaviertel, Berlin
  • 1958: Administration and laboratory building of Titan GmbH , Leverkusen
  • 1959–1962: Wilhelm-Raabe-Strasse apartment block, Düsseldorf
  • 1959–1968: VHS- Studienhaus Düsseldorf , Düsseldorf (demolished in 1997)
  • 1959–1970: Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus , Düsseldorf
  • 1960: Piel house, Meererbusch garden city
  • before 1966: two-storey residential building in the Syburg district of Dortmund
  • 1965–1972: State Mechanical Engineering School, Wuppertal-Elberfeld

literature

  • Werner Durth : German Architects. Biographical entanglements 1900–1970. Braunschweig 1986; New edition: Stuttgart / Zurich 2001, ISBN 3-7828-1141-0 .
  • Düsseldorf University of Applied Sciences, Department of Architecture (Ed.): Hommage à Bernhard Pfau. Documentation of a seminar on the work of Bernhard Pfaus in SS 1996. In: ad. June 25, 1999, ISBN 3-923669-56-9 (student thesis by Marion Hüllinghorst and Roland Ratzel / Chair Prof. Niklaus Fritschi; Dipl.- Ing.Norbert Ebel)
  • Julius Niederwöhrmeier: The life's work of the Düsseldorf architect Bernhard Pfau 1902–1989. Stuttgart 1997, ISBN 3-7828-4033-X (also dissertation, Technical University Darmstadt, 1996.)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Larger living in old age in Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung from December 25, 2016, page 55
  2. ↑ Werner Durth: Deutsche Architekten p. 285 Fig. 98
  3. ^ Werner Durth: Deutsche Architekten p. 296
  4. ↑ a b c d e f Modern designs issue 3/1930
  5. ↑ Conversion of a residential building. In: Innen-Decoration , vol. 41, 1930, issue 3, pp. 346–360 ( digital copy ).
  6. ↑ a b c Haus Vogelsang Deutsche Bauzeitung, year 1941, issue 44
  7. ↑ a b c Modern Design Issue 1/1932
  8. ^ A b Alfred Vietze: Interior and exterior architecture: To the new works by Bernhard Pfau, Düsseldorf in interior decoration , born 1934, issue 11
  9. ↑ Monuments in Wittlaer: Haus Pfau (Bauhaus architecture), Am Mühlenkamp 9, photo: Bruno Bauer , on wittlaer.net
  10. ↑ Interior decoration , year 1937, issue 11
  11. ↑ http://www.goethe.de/ins/tr/ank/prj/urs/geb/ind/ver/deindex.htm
  12. ↑ Vogelsang House at baukunst-nrw
  13. ↑ a b Bauwelt , born 1954, issue 17
  14. ↑ Bauen + Wohnen born 1952, issue 3
  15. ^ BDA (ed.): Architecture in the Ruhr area - Gelsenkirchen . Gelsenkirchen 1985
  16. ^ A b Hochschule Niederrhein (ed.): Vision and perspective - Krefeld Baukultur by Bernhard Pfau . Krefeld 2013
  17. ↑ House in Viersen
  18. ^ Building and Living , born 1954, No. 3
  19. ↑ Building and Living , Born 1954, Issue 4
  20. ↑ http://germanpostwarmodern.tumblr.com/post/129279756666
  21. ↑ Light architecture , Bauwelt-Verlag, Berlin 1956
  22. ↑ a b Building and Living , Born 1957, Issue 2
  23. ^ German construction magazine , year 1957, issue 6
  24. ↑ Deutsche Bauzeitung , year 1960, issue 1
  25. ↑ Meyer-Bohe: New apartment buildings. Koch, 1966.
personal data
SURNAME Pfau, Bernhard
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Pfau, Bernhard Mathäus (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German architect and specialist author
DATE OF BIRTH June 1, 1902
PLACE OF BIRTH Wolfach
DATE OF DEATH July 30, 1989
Place of death Dusseldorf