Erwin Friedrich Baumann

EF Baumann, 1947

Erwin Friedrich Baumann (born October 27, 1890 in Bern ; † February 8, 1980 ibid) was a Swiss architect and sculptor .

Life

Erwin Friedrich Baumann was born in Bern in 1890 as the second of four children of the master builder and politician Friedrich Baumann (1835–1910) and Marie-Louise Baumann-Bigler (1856–1937). Before starting school, he fell ill with diphtheria , and the stay at the Rotbad ( Diemtigtal ) spa meant that he missed the boat at school. Baumann writes in his curriculum vitae: "I slipped the bottom quarter of the class up to the grammar school and would have slipped so badly into the lecture halls of the universities". However, as a result of unruly behavior towards a teacher, Baumann had to leave high school.

A year of practical experience with an architect in Vevey was followed by the cavalry recruit and non-commissioned school, then the Matura at the Minerva Zurich and studies in art history and mathematics at the University of Bern . The regulars' table of the Academic Gymnastics Association Rhenania Bern , which he joined in 1911, was in the Bubenberg restaurant in Bern. Baumann often sat here with the Bernese artists who met there (including Ferdinand Hodler ). This environment made him decide “in the future not only to carve coats of arms and figurines with the pocket knife ”. The inadequate and negligent care of the injuries as a result of falling from a horse in the non-commissioned officers' school led to tuberculosis, which ultimately led to the discharge from the army.

Regardless of this incident, Baumann dared to step into the architecture department of the Technical University of Darmstadt . He was enthusiastic about the modeling course with Professor Augusto Varnesi with an introduction to building sculpture, as well as the artists' colony on the Mathildenhöhe in Darmstadt . However, the First World War put an end to the stay in Germany.

After the outbreak of war, Baumann, still in poor health, took part in the border occupation as a volunteer. In 1915 he was released from military service again. This was followed by spa stays in Arosa and Davos . In 1918 Baumann joined Rudolf Gaberel's architecture firm in Davos, where he cultivated friendships with Jakob Bosshart , Paul Held , Wilhelm Schwerzmann and the expressionist Ernst Ludwig Kirchner . He was responsible for the artistic design of the Davos forest cemetery . In 1920 he received first prize in the competition for a memorial to the Bernese cavalry units on the Lueg near Burgdorf . However, his project was not carried out because he refused to attach a relief by the sculptor Karl Hänny that was in his eyes unworthy . In 1920 he was allowed to take over the artistic design of the Wildboden Davos forest cemetery on behalf of Rudolf Gaberel as the local site manager.

In the summer of 1921 Baumann stayed in Paris as a sculptor with Émile-Antoine Bourdelle . In 1921/1922 he traveled to Egypt , where he worked as a sculptor and architect and a. a. Mahmoud sought out Mokhtar . A longer study trip through Greece, the Balkans and Austria took Baumann back to Davos, where he worked again at Bureau Gaberel from 1922 to 1924.

Baumann lived in California from 1924 to 1929 . His brother Paul Baumann also worked as an engineer here. During this time Baumann created numerous wood and stone sculptures and also worked as an architect. In 1925 he received the 1st prize for artistic jewelry for the main hall of the new building of a department store in Los Angeles and in 1928 an award from the Los Angeles Art Museum for his stone sculpture "Steinhauer".

In 1929 Baumann returned to Switzerland, where he worked in Davos, Bern and Münchwilen . In 1938 he married Rita Keller, a Swiss-born woman from Russia, and then spent a few months in Paris as a sculptor under the guidance of Ossip Zadkine . In 1939, just before the outbreak of war, he bought a farmhouse in Faulensee , which he renovated as a home for his family. When the war broke out, he volunteered again for an auxiliary guard company for the army.

Because of his wife's illness, Baumann moved to Bern in 1960, where she died in 1962. Baumann had a studio in the old animal hospital in Bern until his death in 1980. His urn was buried in the family grave in the Schosshaldenfriedhof in Bern.

Of the works from the time in Faulensee and Bern, the capitals in Wimmis Castle (1950), the altar table in the Lerchenfeld (Thun) church (1951) and a fountain figure at the Krattigen schoolhouse (1953), the restorations of the Tschanhaus on the Schüpf are worth mentioning in Faulensee (1952), the church Einigen (1954/1955), the farmhouse "Les Aroles" as a dépendence of the Palace Hotel (today owned by the bank manager and entrepreneur Spiros Latsis ) in Gstaad (1954), the listed building, but on On August 2, 2008 the St. Urs inn in Biberist (SO) (1958–1962) and the Radelfingen church (1958–1965) destroyed by fire , the excavation of the St. Columban Chapel in Faulensee (1960/1961) and the construction management in the expansion of the sugar factory in Aarberg (1958–1960), the new building of the British embassy in Bern (1962) and in the administrative building of the BKW (1960–1963).

Golden eagle on the Simplon

Steinadler by Erwin Friedrich Baumann on the Simplon Pass in the Valais Alps

Officers of the 11 Mountain Brigade considered building a memorial for the soldier in the form of a golden eagle, native in the Lötschental and today's Alpe Veglia and Alpe Devero nature park, as well as a symbol of the brigade, from excavated material from Fort Gondo . Baumann was known in command of the brigade (Colonel Brigadier Hans Bühler was married to a second cousin of Baumann, and his genius colonel , Werner Grimm, knew Baumann from his youth in Bern).

Baumann was given the task of exploring the possibilities, and his suggestions for a quarry stone monument more than nine meters high pleased the two superiors. Baumann described his approach as follows:

“From the point of view of the sculptor, it was necessary to find a new technique for sculptures, and it was necessary to adapt the design to this new technique without impairing its artistic value. In addition, it was very important to the project author to find a work process that the stone cutter and bricklayer would be familiar with from their everyday buildings. As a result, only a plan and batter board came into question, where the builder felt at home with the meter in hand. As easy-to-use additions, the dividers and the plaster model were added as aids as a valid and in all doubts decisive template. The plaster original on a scale of 1:10 could not be approached with a spirit level, square and compass. The floor plans were so imprecise that they should never have been used to enlarge them ten times. It was only the model of an exact batter board and a piece shape formed in this falsework that produced surprisingly good results. The piece form is a negative form of the plaster original on a scale of 1:10. It contains any floor plan, allows you to take any desired parting, and draw out any desired horizontal or vertical section. This piece shape also had the advantage of drawing attention to any violation of the technique of quarry stone masonry; for each layer could be put together on its own on the drawing board and torn open on paper at its inner edge. In all cases of doubt, the masonry could be entered and studied in this crack. If changes were necessary, this often led almost to the limit. Fifteen or twenty layers had to be expanded in order to be able to adapt the correction to the original and all layers affected by it. That was work not just for days, but in some cases even for weeks. "

Linus Birchler wrote to Baumann in 1954:

“I would never have thought that the monumental eagle on the Simplon Pass was your work, and I would never have thought about the great technical problems it posed. When in future I have to deal with the Colossi of Memnon and the rock temples of Abu Simbel in my lectures, I will now also quote your eagle each time, including the ingenious ventilation systems that nobody thinks of. "

In 1943 there was a break between head of genius Werner Grimm and Baumann. Grimm pretended to be the builder of the Simplon eagle all his life, which hurt Baumann deeply and caused him to stay away from the inauguration celebrations on the Simplon in September 1944.

Works (selection)

• 1920: Design for the "Cavalry Monument Competition on the Lueg near Burgdorf"
• 1940: "Lovers", donated to the Swiss Refugee Aid
• 1941: Design for the "Competition PTT administration building Bern Relief, Kampf"
• 1942: "Mineurgruppe"
• 1944: "Simplon-Adler"
• 1945: "Mother with child, horse"
• 1950: "4 column capitals Castle Wimmis "
• 1952: "Last Supper Table Church Lerchenfeld (Thun) "
• 1953: Draft for the "Competition of the Unknown Political Prisoner"
• 1954: "Designs of the Migros Spiez Parzival fountain, decorations on the coat of arms of the Langnau im Emmental "

Individual evidence

1. ^ EF Baumann: Gymnasium and Reality of Life. unpublished manuscript, 1963.
2. ^ Wilhelm Schwerzmann (1877–1966), sculptor
3. ↑ see also: Correspondence between EL Kirchner and EF Baumann: Advice in a state of wear and tear. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner's last letters . In: Der Spiegel . No. 19 , 1980, pp. 232-235 ( Online - May 5, 1980 ).
4. ↑ EF Baumann: Travels into the past and into the future. In: Zentralblatt der Schweizerischen Akademischen Turnerschaft , No. 9/10, 1924; No. 1-5, 1925; No. 9-10 1927; No. 1-4, 1928.
5. ^ EF Baumann: Impressions and memories of an overseas. In: Zentralblatt der Schweizerischen Akademischen Turnerschaft , No. 9, 10, 11 1934; No. 1, 2 1935.
6. ↑ Los Angeles Sunday Times, May 6, 1928.
7. ↑ EF Baumann: When a building specialist begins to philosophize. In: Zentralblatt der Schweizerischen Akademischen Turnerschaft , No. 1, 1957.
8. ^ EF Baumann in: Schweizerische Bauzeitung , Volume 124, No. 27, December 1944, p. 345 f.
9. ↑ Linus Birchler (1893–1967), Professor of Art History ETHZ, Swiss Federal Conservationist
10. ↑ “ The jubilee told us about his life as a soldier in a leisurely manner, and with beaming eyes he showed pictures of the proud landmark on the Simplon Pass: the mighty granite eagle, symbolized by Werner Grimm's expert guidance, in his capacity as chief of genius of the old 11 Mountain Brigade of freedom in the sublime mountains of Valais. "- from the obituary for Werner Grimm in: Der Bund , No. 339 (from August 11, 1965), p. 2. See also: State Archives Wallis, Depot 2011/36" Simplonadler "correspondence between EF Baumann and Werner Grimm.