Eduard Ludwig (architect)

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Airlift memorial in front of Berlin-Tempelhof Airport
Reconstructed pump room in Dessau

Eduard Ludwig (born November 24, 1906 in Mühlhausen / Thuringia , † December 28, 1960 in Berlin ) was a German architect , according to whose plans the airlift memorials in Berlin, Frankfurt am Main and Celle were built.

Life

Eduard Ludwig was born in 1906 as the son of a master carpenter in Mühlhausen, Thuringia, and traditionally learned the carpentry trade in his father's workshop. After his apprenticeship in Mühlhausen, he attended the arts and crafts school in Blankenburg (Harz) and from 1926 the academy for arts and crafts in Dresden . In the winter semester of 1928/1929 he enrolled at the Bauhaus in Dessau and became one of the preferred students under Ludwig Mies van der Rohe . He was a student from 1928 to 1932 and graduated from Mies van der Rohe. Until 1937 he continued his work as an architect for his former teacher in Berlin. His employment with the Deutsche Reichspost is documented until 1938, but during the war he was “self-employed in the construction industry” - according to the personnel file of the University of the Arts with the “building battalion” in Crossen an der Oder until 1942 and with the “building administration council in the military district command III ”in Berlin until the end of the war. From 1947, in addition to his professorship for architecture at the University of Fine Arts in Berlin, until his sudden accidental death in 1960, he ran his own architecture office.

His work includes designs for folding and plug-in furniture, cupboards and a bench for the Dessauer Kreissparkasse. There are also drawings of the planned Borchert department store in Dessau and the so-called pump room from 1932, which closed off the masters' house to the east. Both projects are among the most important works that Ludwig produced during his Bauhaus days under the influence of Mies van der Rohe. Ludwig made the design for the Borchert department store and the execution drawing for the drinking hall for the sale of fruit and vegetable juices. It is the only building by Mies van der Rohe that was realized for the city of Dessau. The pump room was demolished around 1970 .

The Berlin pavilion, which he designed for the traffic exhibition in Munich in 1953, was almost an ancestor of the info box . The flat box made of Eternit plates stood on stilts, a lattice window opened to the park, where the building seemed to float under tall trees.

But his passion was bungalow-style houses, and the impetus for this came from Mies van der Rohe and his Barcelona pavilion . Ludwig belonged to the group of architects at Interbau from 1957, and his group of five atrium houses ( Händelallee 26–34 ) still stands in Berlin's Hansaviertel today . He even moved into one of the bungalows himself. A year later he contributed a model house of this type for the Brussels World Exhibition .

The implementation of his plan to build an airlift memorial to commemorate the Berlin Airlift is outstanding . Originally planned as a single piece in light metal construction, replicas of the Berlin original were made in 1985 and 1988 in Frankfurt am Main and Celle, which lost some of its intended lightness due to the reinforced concrete construction prescribed by the building authorities. At the topping-out ceremony in July 1951 in front of Tempelhof Airport, Eduard Ludwig gave another speech, but the invitation to the opening ceremony, for which he also planned the seating, no longer mentions him. It was an accident at the AVUS in Berlin that ended the path to widespread recognition for the 54-year-old architect in 1960. “Symbolic of the abruptly slowed climb, he raced to his death in a sports car.” In Ludwig's personal circle, there were hints that the accident on the AVUS could not have been caused by a carelessness alone. Fifty years after his death, only his work reminds of him; there is still no honorific at the Airlift Memorial.

Martinus Church built according to Ludwig's design, Tegel-Süd church until 1967

The Evangelical Martinus Church in Berlin-Tegel (named that way since 1967), based on Eduard Ludwig's design by Karl Otto in 1963, is a cuboid reinforced concrete skeleton structure whose community rooms are below the church hall. The delicate staircase is flanked by two towering concrete slabs that support the bell housing.

literature

  • Günther Kühne:  Ludwig, Eduard. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 15, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1987, ISBN 3-428-00196-6 , p. 425 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Bauhaus acquires work from architect Eduard Ludwig. In: Der Tagesspiegel of October 24, 2007 ( online , last accessed on April 3, 2011)
  • Günter Kowa: Who was Eduard Ludwig? In: Bauwelt , year 2010, issue 7/8 (from February 19, 2010), pp. 8–11 ( online , last accessed on May 11, 2017)
  • 50 years ago died with architect and designer Eduard Ludwig. In: Thüringer Allgemeine from December 28, 2010 ( online , accessed March 8, 2011)
  • Helmut Reuter: Living spaces for a new era. Eduard Ludwig as a furniture designer . In: Rudolf Fischer u. a. (Ed.): Modern living. Furniture design and modern living, Berlin: Gebr. Mann 2016 (studies on modern architecture and industrial design; 3), ISBN 9783786127611 , pp. 387-413.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Helmut Erfurth, Elisabeth Tharandt: Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. The pump room, his only building in Dessau. The collaboration with the Bauhaus student Eduard Ludwig. Anhaltische Verlagsgesellschaft, Dessau 1995. (= Bauhaus miniatures , 1.)
  2. ^ Günter Kowa: Bauwelt, Who Was Eduard Ludwig? , 2010, accessed June 27, 2018
  3. ^ The Martinus Church, an architectural competition was announced , accessed on June 27, 2018
personal data
SURNAME Ludwig, Eduard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German architect
DATE OF BIRTH November 24, 1906
PLACE OF BIRTH Mühlhausen / Thuringia
DATE OF DEATH December 28, 1960
Place of death Berlin