Felix Genzmer (architect)

Felix Genzmer, around 1900

Felix August Helfgott Genzmer (born November 22, 1856 in Labes , Pomerania , † August 6, 1929 in Berlin-Dahlem ) was a German architect , construction clerk and university professor . He was an important representative of late historicism and worked primarily in Wiesbaden and Berlin .

Live and act

As the city architect of Wiesbaden from 1894 to 1903, he was responsible for large parts of the urban planning at the time (see also Feldherrenviertel , Rheingauviertel , Dichterviertel ) and designed many buildings himself, including several schools, the foyer of the State Theater (1902), the Römertor (1902) and the design of squares like the market basement (1899–1901) and utility buildings. Through his work he significantly shaped the cityscape of today's Hessian state capital .

As the successor to Julius Raschdorff , Felix Genzmer from Wiesbaden was appointed to the chair for urban planning and colored decoration at the architecture department of the Technical University of Charlottenburg in 1903 , which was the first of its kind in Prussia to be established at his request. Together with his colleague Josef Brix (1859–1943), who represented urban planning in the civil engineering department , Genzmer founded the urban planning seminar in the winter semester of 1907/1908 .

In Berlin he was primarily active as an architect of the royal theaters and as a professor at the Technical University. From 1904 to 1905 he rebuilt the interior of the Berlin theater designed by Karl Friedrich Schinkel . Between 1908 and 1910 he was also significantly involved in the planning of the New Royal Opera House in Berlin . Together with Brix, Genzmer also ran his own architecture office in Berlin. In 1907 they won a competition to design the Berlin garden city of Frohnau . The designs were carried out by 1910, and today the entire area is a listed building . Together with Brix, Genzmer participated in numerous other construction projects.

The Josef Brix and Felix Genzmer Park in Berlin-Frohnau has had his name and that of his colleague since 2011 .

Urban planning seminar

From the winter semester of 1907/1908, Brix and Genzmer led the urban planning seminar at the Royal Technical University of Berlin , each with eight events each year, with their own or guest lectures. Well-known speakers such as Reinhard Baumeister , Rudolf Eberstadt , Josef Stübben , Albert Erich Brinckmann , Philipp Rappaport and others were invited. The urban planning lectures were published in lecture cycles at Verlag Ernst & Sohn and were the first fundamental publications on the subject of urban planning at the time. The seminar was continued after Genzmer by Hermann Jansen (1922) and after Brix by Hermann Ehlgoetz .

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  Urban planning lectures

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  Subjects 1907/1908

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  Subjects 1909/1910/1911

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  Subjects 1912/1913/1914

literature

• Walther Genzmer:  Genzmer, Felix August Helfgott. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 6, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1964, ISBN 3-428-00187-7 , p. 195 ( digitized version ).
• Max Guther : On the history of urban planning at German universities. In: Ulrike Pampe (Red.): Heinz Wetzel and the history of urban planning at German universities. A publication of the Urban Planning Institute of the University of Stuttgart on the 100th birthday of Heinz Wetzel on October 19, 1982. Urban Planning Institute of the University of Stuttgart, Stuttgart 1982, pp. 34–117.
• Peter Schabe: Felix Genzmer. Architect of late historicism in Wiesbaden. Early creative years and city architect time 1881–1903 (= publications of the Historical Commission for Nassau , Volume 62.) Historical Commission for Nassau Wiesbaden 1997, ISBN 978-3-930221-02-8 . (also dissertation, Johann Wolfgang Goethe University Frankfurt am Main, 1994.)
• Günther Leicher: The Kaiser himself kidnapped him to Berlin. In: Wiesbadener Tagblatt from April 11, 2003 ( baupool.com ( Memento from September 28, 2007 in the Internet Archive ))

Web links

Commons : Felix Genzmer  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Felix Genzmer in the catalog of the German National Library
• Short biography in the internet presentation 125 years of Technische Universität Berlin (only as a zip folder with 2.2 MB on the pages of the digital repository of the Technische Universität Berlin )
• 129 sheets with designs by Genzmer from the years 1879 to 1926 in the architecture museum of the Technical University of Berlin

Individual evidence

1. ↑ 38 sheets with detailed drawings of the renovation work on the theater in the Architecture Museum of the Technical University of Berlin, accessed on October 17, 2009
2. ↑ 30 sheets with detailed drawings of the Royal Opera House in Berlin-Tiergarten in the Architecture Museum of the Technical University of Berlin, accessed on October 17, 2009
3. ↑ Area monument Oranienburger Chaussee / Hubertussee
4. ↑ Area monument road and green area system Frohnau