Ernst Neufert

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The Abbeanum in Jena, 1929–30

Ernst Neufert (born March 15, 1900 in Freyburg an der Unstrut ; † February 23, 1986 in Rolle in Switzerland ) was a German architect who, in addition to his teaching activities and membership in various standardization committees, became best known for his book on building design theory .

Life

The single dormitory in Darmstadt , 1952–1955
Eternit plant in Heidelberg, 1954
Quelle shipping center and source tower in Nuremberg , built in sections from 1955 to 1967
Quelle dispatch center in the evening, panoramic view

Ernst Neufert was born in March 1900 as the son of Karl Hermann Neufert and his wife Florentine Berta, nee. Schlieder was born in Freyburg an der Unstrut. The family on the father's side comes from the Lower Silesian old town ( Lüben ). He attended the local community school from 1906 to 1914. In 1917 he began an apprenticeship as a bricklayer . From 1918 on, he also completed part-time training at the Grand Ducal Saxon Building Trade School in Weimar . On the recommendation of Paul Klopfer , he was one of the first students to move to the still young Bauhaus in Weimar in 1919 . He completed his studies there in 1920 and traveled with the expressionist architect Paul Linder (1897–1968) for a year to study as a draftsman for medieval churches through Spain. In Barcelona they met the aged Antoni Gaudí , whose architecture left deep marks on the young artists. With Julius Meier-Graefe, Neufert is one of the earliest recipients of Gaudí in Germany. After 1921 he returned to the Bauhaus and worked in a leading position under Walter Gropius in one of the most renowned architecture firms of the Weimar Republic in Weimar and Dessau . There he met his wife, the painter Alice Spies-Neufert , and together they had four children (Peter, Christa, Ingrid and Ilas). In 1925 he worked in close collaboration with Gropius on the new Bauhaus buildings and the Masters' Houses for Wassily Kandinsky , Paul Klee and Georg Muche in Dessau and in 1925/1926 with Gropius on the AMCO factory expansion building for the wood goods factory AMCO, August Müller & Co, in Kirchbrak near Bodenwerder ( Holzminden district).

In 1926 he returned to Weimar and taught at the local building school (successor institution of the Bauhaus) as a professor of planning under Otto Bartning. 1928 design for August Müller's private house in Kirchbrak, which was not implemented. In 1929 he realized the Neufert house as his private house in Gelmeroda near Weimar as a prototype for a serial single-family house in quick construction made of prefabricated wooden elements (today the seat of the Ernst Neufert Foundation and the Neufert-Box . A small exhibition hall). After the building school was closed by the NS administration, Neufert moved to Berlin and worked as a teacher in Johannes Itten's private art school . 1928–1930 he realized various projects, for example the cafeteria on Philosophenweg and the Abbeanum in Jena .

Early on he recognized the possibilities of rationalization in the construction industry, but also the need for normative foundations.

From 1934 to 1944 Neufert was the in-house architect of the United Lausitz Glass Works . He designed the director's residence Dr. Kindt (with colored glass by Charles Crodel ) took over the design and construction management of settlements , office buildings and factories in Weißwasser , Tschernitz and Kamenz . The book building design theory came from this activity . Handbook for construction professionals, builders, teachers and learners from March 15, 1936, which is still considered a standard work today and has been translated into a total of 18 languages. Work on this standard work, often simply referred to as Neufert , was continued by Ernst Neufert's son Peter Neufert , among others, until his death in 1999 .

In 1936, Neufert traveled to New York and Spring Green, Wisconsin with plans to emigrate to visit Frank Lloyd Wright and explore his job opportunities in the United States. On the return trip to New York he received news of the enormous success of the building design apprenticeship and traveled back to Berlin to prepare the new edition. Numerous industrial orders for his office led to his decision to initially stay in Germany. Neufert did not conform to the prevailing architectural dogmas of National Socialism, but stayed in the Bauhaus school of thought, which was characterized by functionalism and rationalism . This architectural style, which has otherwise been officially frowned upon since the mid-1930s, was accepted for non-representative building projects, in particular industrial buildings, as it promised the rational construction of industrial complexes. Albert Speer also saw the potential of Neufert's previous work in this. In 1939, Neufert was commissioned by Speer to rationalize industrial construction and to accelerate the production of living space and industrial facilities with the help of thorough standards in cooperation with large companies. It was in this context that his draft of the house construction machine and his building regulations (BOL) arose , which was published in 1943 with a foreword by Albert Speer in the publishing house “Volk und Reich”. Neufert was valued and promoted by the National Socialist rulers. Neufert was not a member of the NSDAP , but a supporting member of the NSKK . In 1943 he became Reich Commissioner for Building Standardization, and in 1944 he became a member of Speer's staff for the reconstruction of cities destroyed by bombs . In the final phase of the Second World War , Adolf Hitler included him in the God-gifted list of the most important architects in August 1944 , which saved him from being deployed in the war, including on the home front . After the war he belonged to the Anholter circle around Rudolf Wolters .

On April 17, 1946 (with effect from January 1, 1946) Neufert was half appointed to a professorship for architecture at the Technical University of Darmstadt . Neufert succeeded Karl Lieser , who was dismissed by the American authorities. The other half of the position was filled by Jan Hubert Pinand . In 1946, Neufert's professorship was increased to 100%.

In the Soviet occupation zone , Neufert's writings Bombensicherer Luftschutz im Wohnungsbau (published by Speer im Volk und Reich Verlag, Berlin 1942) and The Plans for the War Unit Type (Verlag der Deutschen Arbeitsfront , Berlin 1943) were placed on the list of literature to be segregated.

In 1953 Neufert re-founded his own architecture office in Darmstadt. His most important projects include the single dormitory on Mathildenhöhe in Darmstadt (1952–1955), which is one of the Darmstadt masterpieces , the hydraulic engineering hall of the Technical University in Darmstadt (1954–1955), the main factory of the Eternit company in Leimen near Heidelberg (1954–1960), the dispatch center of the Quelle mail order company (1955–58), as well as numerous other buildings for industry. Neufert was also the house architect for Dyckerhoff Zementwerke .

In particular, Neufert's post-war work is characterized by strictly functionalist designs in the Bauhaus formal language. The four-storey dispatch center of the Quelle mail order company in Nuremberg, built from 1955 onwards, with its over 250 m long street facade with continuous horizontal ribbon windows and its yellow clinker parapets shows formal borrowings from the Fagus factory in Alfeld by Walter Gropius . It is thus an example of attempts in the post-war period to reconnect with the classical modernism of the Weimar Republic .

Ernst Neufert was born in 1921 in his first marriage to Alice Spies-Neufert . Vollmer married. The marriage resulted in the children Peter Neufert (architect), Christa, Ingrid and Ilas. The marriage ended in divorce in 1935. In 1939 Neufert was married to Käthe Illgen for the second time. The couple had a daughter, Katja. Ernst Neufert died on February 23, 1986 in his private house in Bugnaux-sur-Rolle on Lake Geneva .

Honors

  • 1950: Honorary plaque from the Finnish Architects' Association
  • 1950: Corresponding honorary member of the Reial Académia de Ciències i Arts de Barcelona
  • 1953: Honorary Corresponding Member of the Royal Institut of British Architects
  • 1965: Great Cross of Merit of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany
  • 1965: Johann Joseph Ritter von Prechtl Medal from the Vienna University of Technology
  • 1970: Johann Heinrich Merck honor of the city of Darmstadt
  • 1976: Large Cross of Merit with Star of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany
  • 1980: Honorary doctorate from the University of Innsbruck; Professor hc and Dr. hc from the University of Lima

Buildings (selection)

Fonts

  • 25 wooden houses , 1934.
  • Building design theory . Manual for construction professionals, builders, teachers and students.
1st edition: Bauwelt-Verlag, Berlin 1936.
40th, revised edition: Vieweg + Teubner, Wiesbaden 2012, ISBN 978-3-8348-0732-8 .
  • The Octameter System , 1939.

literature

  • Patricia Merkel, The work of Ernst Neufert from 1920 to 1940: With a catalog raisonné and an overview of works in pictures , Wiesbaden 2017, ISBN 978-3-658-16856-8 .
  • Nicole Delmes, Johannes Kister and Lilian Pfaff (eds.): Ernst Neufert Peter Neufert , Ostfildern 2014, ISBN 978-3-7757-3812-5 .
  • Ralf Dorn, Werner Durth , Udo Gleim, Helge Svenshon: Ernst Neufert 1900–1986 - the life and work of the architect. Darmstadt 2011 (for the exhibition of the same name in the hydraulic engineering hall).
  • Walter Prigge (Ed.): Ernst Neufert. Standardized building culture in the 20th century . Edition Bauhaus Dessau. Campus Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1999, ISBN 3-593-36256-2 .
  • Neufert Foundation and Johannes Kister (ed., Editor Patricia Merkel): 70 years of Neufert building design apprenticeship. An anthology on the theory of building design by Ernst Neufert . Wiesbaden: Friedr. Vieweg & Sohn Verlag / GWV Fachverlage GmbH, 2006 (anthology on Neufert's life with the current state of research and reports from contemporary witnesses; published for the conference 70 years of BEL in Dessau).
  • Uwe Hinkfoth:  Neufert, Ernst. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 19, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-428-00200-8 , p. 116 f. ( Digitized version ).

Web links

Commons : Ernst Neufert  - Collection of Images

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ see also Joaquin Medina Warmburg, Gaudí at the Bauhaus. Gropius, Neufert, Linder and the Gothic ideal , as well as: Report on the encounter with Gaudi In: R.Stamm u. D. Schreiber, Gaudí in Germany , Lyrik des Raumes, p. 30f. u. 149-159.
  2. ↑ Thilo Hilpert: Human signs: Ernst Neuferts BEL and BOL, Le Corbusier's Modulor, design basis between 1936 and 1943 . In: Thilo Hilpert (Ed.): Century of Modernity - The Century of Modernity 1904–2016 Architecture and Urban Development, Essays and Texts . Springer Vieweg, Wiesbaden 2015, ISBN 978-3-658-07042-7 , pp. 195-196 .
  3. ^ A b Ernst Klee : The cultural lexicon for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-10-039326-5 , p. 431.
  4. ↑ http://www.polunbi.de/bibliothek/1946-nslit-n.html
  5. ↑ a b c d Neufert building at four locations in Weißwasser
  6. ↑ a b c Gernot Weckherlin: Glass warehouse, tub building and Kindt house by Ernst Neufert in Weißwasser . In: Olaf Thormann (Ed.): Bauhaus Sachsen / Bauhaus Saxony . Arnoldsche Art Publishers, Stuttgart 2019, ISBN 978-3-89790-553-5 , pp. 500-506 .
  7. ↑ a b c d Archive link ( Memento of the original from March 9, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.stiftung.neufert.org
  8. ↑ Entry in the Berlin State Monument List
personal data
SURNAME Neufert, Ernst
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German architect, Bauhaus teacher, author of the building design theory
DATE OF BIRTH March 15, 1900
PLACE OF BIRTH Freyburg an der Unstrut
DATE OF DEATH February 23, 1986
Place of death role