Ernst Georg Gladbach

Ernst Georg Gladbach

Ernst Georg Gladbach (born October 30, 1812 in Darmstadt , † December 26, 1896 in Zurich ) was a German - Swiss architect , university professor and founder of Swiss farmhouse research .

Professional biography

Gladbach was the son of a Hanoverian lawyer who had gone to Paris to join the French Revolution and, during the Napoleonic period, on mediation by Georg von Wedekind , came to Darmstadt as legation counselor, where he married and settled. The young Gladbach, who apparently had a difficult relationship with his father, developed a close relationship with his relatives Fritz Hessemer and Georg Moller at an early age . Even as a schoolboy he worked in the office of his uncle, the Hessian senior building officer Moller, who trained a large number of successful architects and where he met Ferdinand Stadler . There he completed his apprenticeship after his confirmation. He then went to study in Göttingen , where he became a member of the Corps Hassia Göttingen, and to Giessen , where he became a member of the old Gießen fraternity Germania . was and heard from Liebig and studied mathematics, and to Heidelberg , where he became a Heidelberg student fraternity and continued studying physics and mathematics, but through Gervinus came into contact with Johann Friedrich Heinrich Schlosser . After these studies, Gladbach passed his state examination in construction, which he passed with distinction. First he went for three years as an accessist to the district builder Ritter in Nidda , where he met his future wife.

In 1836 Gladbach was given a two-year vacation for the study trip that was mandatory for an architect at the time. Following northern Germany, Berlin and Dresden, he traveled on to Italy, where he visited Florence, Pisa, Siena, Orvieto and Rome. In Rome he also received his certificate of employment as a (Hessian) district architect, and finally he saw Naples, Paestum and Sicily, where he climbed Mount Etna. After his return journey via Rome, Verona and Munich, he returned to Darmstadt in 1839 and married.

The position as district builder did not satisfy him, since he could hardly plan new buildings, but was mainly concerned with the maintenance of the roads and road maintenance depots. Therefore, with the third volume, he continued Moller's work, Monuments of German Architecture . In addition, his wife had died after nine years of marriage and he was looking after the three children.

His friend Ferdinand Stadler , professor of building construction at the newly founded Eidgenössisches Polytechnikum in Zurich, then tried to bring Gladbach to the university, where he was also appointed in 1857. Arnold Geiser was an assistant at Gladbach from 1876 to 1882 .

Gladbach was a professor of building construction from 1857 to 1890 and during this time intensively researched the various Swiss regional architectural styles, which he meticulously measured, erased and published in several publications . The stitches he initially commissioned did not satisfy him, and he developed his own techniques, for example for depicting the wood grain and the finest details. In this way, he differentiated the then generalized, historicizing Swiss style, as it appeared belittling on hotels, parks and exhibition buildings.

According to him, which is Gladbachstrasse in Zurich Fluntern named, the city circle, where he last lived.

Fonts

• Monuments of German architecture. III. Part. Started by Dr. Georg Moller, continued by Ernst Gladbach. Publishing house by CW Leske. Darmstadt without date (1854).
• The Swiss wood style in its cantonal and structural differences is presented in comparison with wood buildings in Germany. Part 1. Caesar Schmidt, Zurich 1868.
• Template sheets for building construction theory. Zurich 1870.
• Characteristic wooden buildings of Switzerland from the 16th to the 19th century along with their interior fittings, taken from nature. Claesen, Berlin 1870.
• The wood architecture of Switzerland. Orell Füssli, Zurich 1876.
• The Swiss wood style in its cantonal and structural differences is presented in comparison with wood buildings in Germany. Part 1. Carl Koehler's Verlag, Darmstadt 1868 ( digitized version of the Stuttgart University Library )
• The Swiss wood style in its cantonal and structural differences is presented in comparison with wood buildings in Germany. Part 2. Caesar Schmidt, Zurich 1883.

literature

• Jan Capol: Ernst Georg Gladbach . In: Isabelle Rucki and Dorothee Huber (eds.): Architectural Lexicon of Switzerland - 19./20. Century. Birkhäuser, Basel 1998, ISBN 3-7643-5261-2 .
• Georg Lasius : Prof. Ernst Gladbach, honorary member of the Swiss Association of Engineers and Architects. (Nekrolog) In: Schweizerische Bauzeitung. Vol. 29 (1897) No. 3, pp. 15-18. On-line.
• Wilhelm Ludwig Lehmann : Professor Ernst Gladbach. In: Neujahrsblatt der Kunstgesellschaft in Zürich for 1898. pp. 1–29 ( digitized from Wikisource ).
• Rudolf Mumenthaler: Ernst Georg Gladbach. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
• Knut Stegmann: About the "researching artist" - Ernst Gladbach (1812–1896) and the research and communication of Swiss timber construction traditions. In: Uta Hassler (ed.): The textbook discourse on building. VDF, Zurich 2015, pp. 184–200. ISBN 978-3728136862
• Knut Stegmann: Analyzing Historical Timber Structures - A Case Study on Ernst Gladbach (1812-1896) and His Research on the "Swiss Style". In: Robert Carvais et al. (Ed.): Nuts & Bolts of Construction History. Culture, Technology and Society. Volume 1. Picard, Paris 2012, pp. 3-10. On-line.

supporting documents

1. ↑ Kösener corps lists 1910, 73 , 73
2. ^ Paul Wentzcke : Fraternity lists. Second volume: Hans Schneider and Georg Lehnert: Gießen - The Gießener Burschenschaft 1814 to 1936. Görlitz 1942, F. Germania. No. 510.
3. ↑ Up to this point, the biography follows the obituary of Georg Lasius, his colleague at ETH. The architecture studies in Heidelberg and Giessen, which are reported in the architectural dictionary, existed then - and do not exist today.
4. ↑ Page about Gladbachstrasse on www.alt-zueri.ch