Carl Krayl

Carl Krayl (born April 17, 1890 in Weinsberg near Heilbronn , † April 1, 1947 in Werder (Havel) ; full name: Carl Christian Krayl ) was a German architect who mainly worked in Magdeburg .

Life

Carl Krayl, the eldest child of court notary Ernst Ludwig Krayl from Herrenberg near Stuttgart, attended the Royal Württemberg School of Applied Arts in Stuttgart from 1909 after completing elementary and secondary school . This was followed by studies under his mentor Paul Bonatz at the architecture department of the Technical University of Stuttgart . After successfully completing his degree, Krayl began his professional career in 1912 in the office of architect Carl Anton Meckel in Freiburg im Breisgau . At the beginning of 1914 he moved to Nuremberg , where he took up a job in the Brendel architectural office, which he had to interrupt until 1918 when the First World War began. After that he worked for Brendel for another three years and became a partner in the architecture office.

In 1919, Krayl and the architect Bruno Taut, who was working in Berlin at the time, became known through his artist group “ Gläsernekette ”. Under the influence of the November Revolution of 1918, the group consisting mainly of architects, to which Walter Gropius and Hans Scharoun also belonged, conducted an anonymous correspondence with one another, which dealt with the question of how the revolutionary visions of art - especially of architecture - could be included. The ideas developed there later led to the architectural direction " New Building ", which was primarily dedicated to social housing. Krayl took part in the exchange of ideas under the pseudonym "Anfang". The contact with Taut led to the fact that, after he had been appointed to the city planning council in Magdeburg, Krayl was appointed head of the design office in the building department of the city of Magdeburg in 1921. Krayl then moved to Magdeburg, where he moved into an apartment in the Reform settlement developed by Taut, which he made a subject of general interest through expressionist painting and furniture design. In his professional activity he implemented Taut's ideas of colored architecture and designed Magdeburg house facades with Dadaistic , futuristic, cubistic and deconstructive elements.

After Taut left Magdeburg, Krayl also left the municipal service and opened an office community in Magdeburg in 1924 together with the architect Maximilian Worm . In cooperation with Worm, Krayl planned Magdeburg commercial buildings such as the Landeskreditbank (1924) and the Allgemeine Ortskrankenkasse (1926) as well as the Schneidersgarten residential complex in the Magdeburg district of Sudenburg (1926). In 1926 Krayl joined the architects' association “ Der Ring ”, in which young architects had come together to promote “New Building”. The ideas of the “New Building” flowed into Krayl's Magdeburg housing development projects, for which he was responsible from 1927. After the Fermersleben settlement, the Cracau and Bancksche Siedlung housing estates (now the Curie settlement) were built from 1929 onwards, giving Magdeburg the title of “City of New Building”. In addition to these major projects, Krayl also took on orders for trade fair structures and worked as a set designer. His last projects in Magdeburg from 1932 to 1933 included the expansion of the Reform settlement, the trade union building and the Oli-Lichtspiele.

After the National Socialists came to power, Krayl was considered a "cultural Bolshevik" and received no more building contracts. After five years of unemployment, he went to Werder (Havel) in 1938 , where he was able to work as a technical employee in the construction department of the Reichsbahndirektion Berlin until 1945 . After the war he had the opportunity to work with the famous architect Hans Scharoun in Berlin for a short time .

Krayl's work has left lasting traces in Magdeburg. Despite the heavy destruction of the city in World War II, its buildings have been preserved and shape the cityscape in many places. A street in Magdeburg called the "Carl-Krayl-Ring" commemorates his work.

Fonts

• New architecture. Residential buildings in Magdeburg . In: Die Form, vol. 1, 1925/26, issue 13, pp. 332–337 ( digitized version ).

literature

• Martin Wiehle : Magdeburg personalities. Published by the Magistrate of the City of Magdeburg, Department of Culture. imPuls Verlag, Magdeburg 1993, ISBN 3-910146-06-6 .
• Carl Krayl. In: Guido Heinrich, Gunter Schandera (ed.): Magdeburg Biographical Lexicon 19th and 20th centuries. Biographical lexicon for the state capital Magdeburg and the districts of Bördekreis, Jerichower Land, Ohrekreis and Schönebeck. Scriptum, Magdeburg 2002, ISBN 3-933046-49-1 .
• Gabriele Köster / Michael Stöneberg (eds.): Colorful city - new building. The architecture of Carl Krayl , Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag [2016], ISBN 978-3-422-07392-0 .
• Ute Maasberg: Carl Krayl and the idea of ​​the colored city. In: Christian Antz u. a. (Ed.): New Building New Life. The 20s in Magdeburg, Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag 2018, ISBN 978-3-422-92628-8 , pp. 90–117.

Web links

• Bruno Krayl: Krayl, Carl Christian. ( online project "Magdeburg Biographical Lexicon" , with portrait)
• Carl Krayl in the archive of the Academy of Arts , Berlin