Fagus factory

Fagus factory
UNESCO world heritage
	Fagus factory in Alfeld (Frontale)
National territory:	Germany
Type:	Culture
Criteria :	(ii) (iv)
Surface:	1.88 ha
Buffer zone:	18.89 ha
Reference No .:	1368
UNESCO region :	Europe and North America
	History of enrollment
Enrollment:	2011 (session 35)

Fagus factory in Alfeld (back)

1911/1912: Same view in a photo by Edmund Lill

Last production in the Fagus factory (2018)

The Fagus factory is a factory in the small town of Alfeld an der Leine in southern Lower Saxony and is the seat of the companies Fagus-GreCon and Weinig Grecon. The work was in 1911 by the architect Walter Gropius and his staff Adolf Meyer designed and is one of the first examples of modern architecture since 1946 under monument protection . The entire factory has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since June 2011 .

history

In 1911, the entrepreneur Carl Benscheidt (1858–1947) commissioned Walter Gropius to build a factory building for his new shoe last factory, which would correspond to modern criteria and be located directly on the Hanover – Alfeld – Kassel / Bebra railway line . For the floor plan, Gropius was able to fall back on an already completed preliminary draft by the architect Eduard Werner in order to break new ground in the facade design. Furthermore, Gropius and his colleague Meyer were able to process experiences that had already been gained in the 19th century in the construction of greenhouses, train stations and world exhibitions. The Alfeld factory also has an immediate, but long-unrecognized predecessor in the Steiff factory building in Giengen an der Brenz (1903) designed by an anonymous author . Today, in addition to the shoe lasts production facility, the Fagus factory also houses a shoe museum. The name Fagus is Latin and means beech . Beech wood was the raw material for the industrial shoe last production that has been based in Alfeld since 1858.

The factory has been a listed building since 1946 and has been extensively restored since 1984. Since 2006 there has been a Fagus Gropius exhibition in the former warehouse. On June 25, 2011, the factory was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site .

architecture

The Fagus factory used characteristic building elements that later determined the international style . Particularly noteworthy are the glass curtain walls , the clear cubic shape and the design of the steel girders. The cross-shaped pillars change upwards and become slimmer, with the glass apron in between. The glazing is set in a steel frame, originally Gropius planned the facade in front of the pillars. At ceiling height there is steel cladding instead of the glass panes, this sheet metal apron runs around the corner all the way around the stairwell. So far, the corners of a building have always been very solid and should leave a solid impression. What is revolutionary about this building is the “open” corner, which was the beginning of modern frame construction . The corners of the building are not simply protruding concrete structures, but were reinforced by a cross construction. The building is very narrow and shouldn't leave a monumental impression, lightness and transparency are in conscious contrast to the closed stone and brick building. Gropius not only took care of the exterior design, but also worked out many details and the interior design. In addition to the main buildings, located directly on the Hanover-Göttingen railway line, the ensemble of buildings includes a house for the scale and shunting winch on the former siding of the plant from 1921/22, as well as a gatekeeper's house from 1924/25 with a property wall, which is a provisional from the time of the first World War I replaced. It was the last completed building as part of the construction project.

Karl Benscheidt (1888–1975), son of the company's founder, Carl Benscheidt, commissioned the world-famous photographer Albert Renger-Patzsch (1897–1966) to photograph the Fagus factory in 1928 . Karl Benscheidt gave him complete freedom in choosing a subject. Some of the most famous recordings by Albert Renger-Patzsch were made. Carl Georg Heise , author and publisher of “Die Welt ist schön” (1928), took three photographs of this series into this work - including the “Schuhbügeleisen”, an incunable of modern photography . In April 1928 50 to 60 were taken, with a renewed order in 1952 another 28 recordings. The negatives of the first order were lost in World War II , those of the second order and a series of photographs are kept in the Albert Renger Patzsch Archive . A large number of prints are in the Bauhaus archive in Berlin.

literature

Wulf Schadendorf : The Fagus factory Karl Benscheidt Alfeld / Leine. (= Small Art Guide for Lower Saxony , Volume 5.) Musterschmidt, Göttingen 1954.

Helmut Weber: Walter Gropius and the Faguswerk. Callwey, Munich 1961.

Karin Wilhelm: Walter Gropius. Industrial architect. Dissertation from the University of Marburg. Vieweg, Braunschweig 1983, ISBN 978-3-528-08690-9 ; Springer-Verlag, 2013, ISBN 978-332-29381-0-7 , limited preview in the Google book search, doi : 10.1007 / 978-3-322-93810-7 .

Heinrich Biermann : Architectural treasures in the Hildesheim district. Köhler, Harsum 1993; Reprinted in: Bernward Trouw (ed.), Committed to the homeland: Festschrift for Franz-Christian Jarczyk / Neisse , Neisser Kultur- und Heimatbund, Hildesheim 1999, ISBN 978-3-00-004857-9 , pp. 25-27.

Annemarie Jaeggi: Fagus. Industrial culture between the Werkbund and the Bauhaus. Jovis, Berlin 1998, ISBN 3-931321-83-5 .

Anne Sudrow: The Shoe in National Socialism. A product story in a German-British-American comparison . Wallstein, Göttingen 2010, ISBN 978-3-8353-0793-3 , pp. 352-372; 572-591.

Arne Herbote: Life Reform and Americanization. Notes on the client of the Fagus factory . In: der architekt , 2011, 4, pp. 31–35.

Thomas Oppermann, Friederike Schmidt-Möbus: Fagus. Benscheidt. Gropius. Paths to aesthetic and social modernity. A biography. Steidl, Göttingen 2011, ISBN 978-3-86930-370-3 .

Karl Schünemann: Photographed every day: The photographer Karl Schünemann and the Fagus factory. Fagus-GreCon, Greten / Alfeld 2016, ISBN 978-3-00-055140-6 .

Movies

Fagus - Walter Gropius and the modern factory. Documentary, Germany, 2011, 26 min., Script and direction: Niels-Christian Bolbrinker and Kerstin Stutterheim , production: NDR , arte , first broadcast: July 3rd, 2011 on arte, summary by arte, ( memento from June 5th, 2015 in the web archive archive.today ).
The Fagus factory in Alfeld. Germany at the beginning of modernity. Documentary, Germany, 2012, 14:50 min., Script and director: Andreas Christoph Schmidt , production: SWR , series: Treasures of the World , first broadcast: November 16, 2012 on SWR television , film text and online video by SWR.