Carl Rehorst

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Carl Rehorst (born October 12, 1866 in Schlüchtern , † January 21, 1919 in Cologne ; full name: Friedrich Carl Albert Rehorst ) was a German architect , civil engineer and construction officer .

Life

Career and work

After attending grammar school in his hometown of Schlüchtern (1879-1883) and then the royal grammar school in Dillenburg (1883-1887), Carl Rehorst gave his certificate of maturity at Easter 1887. In the same year he began studying civil engineering in Munich, specializing in structural engineering, before enrolling at the Technical University of Charlottenburg in the winter semester of 1888 . After graduating there in the winter semester of 1890/1891, he passed the first state examination on July 5, 1893 . During the following years until he passed the second state examination in 1897, Rehorst was employed as a government building manager in the building construction department of the Royal Wiesbaden Government (assisting in the new construction of the Wiesbaden regional and district court). In addition to other tasks, he then made designs for the district building and the district court in Wernigerode . After a study trip that took him to Italy and Sicily in 1898, as well as his marriage to Else Siemens, Rehorst joined the city of Halle on March 15, 1899 as a town planning inspector . As town planning officer, he was responsible for numerous urban construction projects in Halle and the surrounding area between 1904 and 1907 (including 1902–1904 expansion of the north wing of Moritzburg Castle ). In 1906 he was appointed state building officer and elected provincial curator of the province of Saxony in Merseburg .

On October 17, 1907, Rehorst was hired as an alderman in Cologne. Until his death in 1919, he assumed responsibility for the newly created department for the entire construction industry. With this, the urban planning of Cologne came under his responsibility, on which he had a significant influence in the spirit of the urban architecture formulated by Camillo Sitte . In the Cologne cityscape, the construction work from Rehorst's term of office can be clearly distinguished from those before his time.

Rehorst stood up for the then modern building culture and was a member of the German Werkbund as a local representative for the Cologne district . In this capacity he was the driving force behind the first large demonstration show of the Werkbund, which was planned from 1912 and opened in 1914 as the Cologne Werkbund exhibition . The show on the right bank Deutz Rhine embankment showed by buildings by architects such as Henry van de Velde , Walter Gropius and Bruno Taut prime examples of upcoming construction projects, and new solutions for interiors, everyday objects and decorative art. The Kulturschau made the name of Cologne known in architectural circles around the world. The Cologne Fair was later able to develop on the site .

Rehorst wanted to see a grand gesture of architecture realized in the Cologne cityscape, in which objects under uniform gables, large roofs and with a reduced number of forms and materials should achieve a uniform overall appearance. To this end, he put through the "building advice" in the Cologne administration, whereby building applications were only approved if they corresponded to the ideas of Rehorst and his employees, in order to ban individualistic fragmentation from the cityscape.

Rehorst created a new east-west axis in Cologne's old town, which he planned from the Deutzer Bridge over Gürzenichstrasse and Schildergasse to Zeppelinstrasse. He specified the long-standing considerations for building the bridge so that the suspension bridge could be opened in 1915. He had the Gürzenichstrasse break through again and thereby also exposed the south side of the Gürzenich . The Schildergasse was widened and opened up towards Neumarkt in particular . The Zeppelinstrasse was rebuilt as a breakthrough on the site of former military buildings. With the new streets, which were laid out in large curves in accordance with the desired urban architecture , Rehorst created space for large representative buildings that were previously unknown in Cologne's old town. The construction work cut deep into the medieval and baroque structure, but gave significant impetus to develop Cologne's old town into a pulsating business center before the First World War.

Although the new large buildings were built by different architects, Rehorst created a uniform overall impression through uniform eaves height and limited material specifications for the stone facades. The Tietz department store (1912–1914) and the Palatium (1912) were built on Gürzenichstrasse, the Hindenburg house (1914–1915) on the corner of Schildergasse and Neumarkt, and the Isay department store (1913–1915) and the Peters department store on Zeppelinstrasse on the Breite Strasse (1910–1914, today: Karstadt) and the Olivandenhof (1913); Similarly, a new building ensemble was created in the area surrounding the cathedral with the Excelsior Hotel Ernst (1910), the Hotel Fürstenhof (1911–1912) and the Deichmannhaus (1913–1914).

Rehorst also implemented the reforming ideal in the alignment plans of the Cologne suburbs: for example, he developed the curved streets for Klettenberg , which differed significantly from the first plans for this quarter. In Riehl he formulated a completely new plan based on the concept of the garden city , which replaced the star-shaped street grid with an organically irregular one. During Rehorst's term of office, the inner fortification belt of the city was dissolved, and Rehorst worked out the plans for its redesign. These were then realized under garden director Fritz Encke .

Carl Rehorst was seen as a popular and charismatic town planner who was committed to the new ideas of architecture. Nevertheless, his modern visions of what a “big city” should look like did not meet with universal approval. Some Cologne architects also felt they were being left out of the Werkbund exhibition. In January 1919 Rehorst died of the Spanish flu .

Commemoration

Shortly after the end of the war in 1945, the city of Cologne named the previous Schemannstrasse in Cologne-Neuehrenfeld after Carl Rehorst, who died in 1919.

literature

  • Werner Adams, Joachim Bauer (ed.): From the botanical garden to the urban green. 200 years of Cologne Green. (= Stadtspuren, Denkmäler in Köln , Volume 30.) JP Bachen Verlag, Cologne 2001, ISBN 3-7616-1460-8 .
  • Wolfram Hagspiel : The development of the Cologne city building authorities (until 1945) and their contribution to building culture. In: Architektur Forum Rheinland eV (Hrsg.): Kölner Stadtbaumeister and the development of the municipal building authority since 1821. S. 37–70, Cologne 2008, ISBN 978-3-940042-03-3
  • Kerstin Küpperbusch: Carl Rehorst. Hallescher Stadtbauratier and reform architect 1866–1919. Halle (Saale) 2003, ISBN 3-931919-09-9 .
  • Ulrich S. Soénius (Hrsg.), Jürgen Wilhelm (Hrsg.): Kölner Personen-Lexikon. Greven, Cologne 2007, ISBN 978-3-7743-0400-0 .

Web links

Commons : Carl Rehorst  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Ulrich S. Soénius, Jürgen Wilhelm: Kölner Personen-Lexikon. Pp. 441-442.
  2. ^ A b c Wolfram Hagspiel : The development of the Cologne city building authorities (until 1945) and their contribution to building culture. In: Architektur Forum Rheinland eV (Hrsg.): Kölner Stadtbaumeister and the development of the municipal building authority since 1821. pp. 37–70, here pp. 52f.
  3. ^ Hiltrud Kier: Reclams City Guide, Architecture and Art Cologne, Stuttgart 2008, p. 171f
  4. ^ Wolfram Hagspiel : The development of the Cologne city building authorities (until 1945) and their contribution to building culture. In: Architektur Forum Rheinland eV (Hrsg.): Kölner Stadtbaumeister and the development of the municipal building authority since 1821. pp. 37–70, here p. 55.
  5. ↑ Hiltrud Kier: Reclams City Guide, Architecture and Art Cologne , Stuttgart 2008, pp. 171 f., 204 f.
  6. ^ Hiltrud Kier: Reclams City Guide, Architecture and Art Cologne, Stuttgart 2008, p. 162
  7. ^ Wolfram Hagspiel : The development of the Cologne city building authorities (until 1945) and their contribution to building culture. In: Architektur Forum Rheinland eV (Hrsg.): Kölner Stadtbaumeister and the development of the municipal building authority since 1821. P. 37–70, here P. 56 f.
  8. ↑ Werner Adams, Joachim Bauer (ed.): From the botanical garden to the urban green. 200 years of Cologne Green. P. 127 f.
  9. ^ Wolfram Hagspiel : The development of the Cologne city building authorities (until 1945) and their contribution to building culture. In: Architektur Forum Rheinland eV (Hrsg.): Kölner Stadtbaumeister and the development of the municipal building authorities since 1821. pp. 37–70, here p. 57.
personal data
SURNAME Rehorst, Carl
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Rehorst, Friedrich Carl Albert (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German civil engineer, architect and construction officer
DATE OF BIRTH October 12, 1866
PLACE OF BIRTH Schluechtern
DATE OF DEATH January 21, 1919
Place of death Cologne