Franz Hillinger (architect)

Franz Hillinger (born March 30, 1895 in Nagyvárad , Kingdom of Hungary , † August 18, 1973 in New York ) was an architect of New Building in Berlin and Turkey .

Life

Hillinger was born to Jewish parents in what was then the Kingdom of Hungary, part of the dual monarchy Austria-Hungary . After serving as a soldier in World War I , he initially wanted to study architecture at the University of Budapest . It was precisely at this time, however, that riots broke out there, which were also blamed on Jews , whereupon all Jews were immediately banned from attending the university.

Hillinger therefore went to Germany and studied architecture at the Technical University of Berlin from 1919 to 1922 . In Berlin he also got to know his evangelical wife, the daughter of his landlord.

Until 1924 he mainly designed single houses for private builders. His first assignment was to design his in-laws' house on a rural property on the outskirts of Berlin.

Carl Legien's residential town

Carl Legien's residential town

From 1924 Hillinger was head of the design office of the Gemeinnützige Heimstätten-, Spar- und Bau-Aktiengesellschaft ( GEHAG ) for almost ten years and worked on several projects with Bruno Taut and Martin Wagner , who designed buildings for GEHAG as independent architects. Hillinger's today best known and most significant achievement of this period, the 1928-1930 created for the building owner GEHAG " Carl Legien Housing Estate " in the district of Prenzlauer Berg is. In 1925, he looked for this, also developed in collaboration with Bruno Taut model settlement of the New Building 1,145-a-half up to three and a half room apartments, all with central heating and a spacious balcony or loggia . Several shops, a communal laundry with childcare, the apartment management, as well as large open spaces and green inner courtyards were an integral part of the concept of this large estate. Hillinger was strongly based on the example of the Tusschendijken settlement built by Jacobus Johannes Pieter Oud in Rotterdam in 1920/1921 , which is why the "Carl Legien" residential area is sometimes also referred to as the " Flame settlement ". Due to the global economic crisis and the seizure of power by the National Socialists, who rejected the New Building style, only the first two construction phases were carried out as planned, the third not until the end of the 1930s using conventional " tenement " construction.

From 1931 to 1932 Hillinger was also a lecturer in architecture at the Technical University of Berlin as assistant to Bruno Taut .

With the beginning of the National Socialism , Hillinger was forced to give up his position at GEHAG in 1933. Afterwards he only worked underground as an architect, designing houses for private builders in Berlin. In 1937 Hillinger was excluded from the Reich Chamber of Fine Arts due to his Jewish descent and his membership in the SPD and was thus banned from working .

He then emigrated to Turkey in 1937, initially without his family, and joined the German community in exile there. His mentor Bruno Taut had also been there since 1936. Three months later he brought his wife and children to join him. However, his brother perished in Auschwitz concentration camp .

Hillinger worked in Turkey as a design architect for the building department of the Ministry of Culture and began to give lectures at the Academy of Fine Arts (today Mimar Sinan University ) in Istanbul . From 1940 to 1943 he was the director of the School of Architecture in Ankara. After the death of Bruno Taut (1938) he completed the projects Taut had started together with his colleagues.

In 1951 he traveled to Canada and first tried to get to the USA from there. From 1953 to 1956 he stayed in Ankara again to supervise the construction of the new parliament building , which was built since 1939 according to the design of the Austrian Clemens Holzmeister . In 1956 (according to other sources as early as 1948) Hillinger and his family finally emigrated to the USA. He worked there with various companies. He died in New York in 1971.

His daughter Edith Hillinger , born in Berlin in the early / mid-1930s, now lives as a visual artist in California . His son Claude Hillinger , who was also born in Berlin in 1930 and is now an emeritus professor of economics, has lived in Germany (Munich) since 1972.

Selection of works

• 1928–1930: Carl Legien residential area , Berlin ( construction management by Franz Hillinger, based on a design by Hillinger and Bruno Taut); Since July 2008, part of the UNESCO - World Heritage " Berlin Modernism Housing Estates "
• 1937: Higher boys' school with boarding school in Trabzon (Trabzon Erkek Lisesi; construction management by Franz Hillinger, based on a design by Bruno Taut)
• 1937–38: Atatürk Lyceum, Ankara (Ankara Atatürk Lisesi; construction management by Franz Hillinger, based on a design by Bruno Taut and Asım Kömürcüoğlu )
• 1938: Pavilion of the Ministry of Culture for the İzmir International Fair (İzmir Enternasyonal Fuarı; design by Bruno Taut, in collaboration with Hans Grimm and Franz Hillinger)
• 1938: Middle school in the Cebeci district of Ankara (Kurtuluş İlk Öğretim Okulu, also Cebeci Ortaokulu; construction management by Franz Hillinger, based on a design by Bruno Taut)
• 1940: Building of the literary science faculty of Ankara University (designed and begun by Bruno Taut at the end of 1936; Hillinger completed the construction together with Hans Grimm after Taut died in 1938)
• 1953–1956: Construction management for the new parliament building in Ankara (built from 1939 to 1961 according to plans by Clemens Holzmeister , in operation from 1949)

literature

• Franz Hillinger or whatever is still progressive. In: The architect , volume 1, Forum-Verlag Stuttgart, 1977
• The scientists expelled from the Technical University of Berlin for “racial” and political reasons . In: TU Berlin (Ed.): 1799 - 1999. From the building academy to the Technical University of Berlin. History and future. An exhibition on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of the Bauakademie's foundation and the 100th anniversary of the right to award doctorates at technical universities. Berlin, 1999
• Franz Hillinger: The growing house . In: Bauen, Siedeln, Wohnen , vol. 12 (1932), no. 15, pp. 211-214.
• Bernd Nicolai : Modernity and Exile. German-speaking architects in Turkey 1925–1955 . Berlin: Verlag für Bauwesen, 1998, ISBN 3-345-00642-1 (also habilitation thesis at TU Berlin, 1996)

Web links

• Pictures of the Ataturk Lyceum in Ankara: [3] , University of Karlsruhe ( Memento from June 28, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
• Drawing of the higher boys' school with boarding school in Trabzon ( Memento from June 28, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
• Franz Hillinger Archive in the Archive of the Academy of Arts, Berlin

References and comments

1. ^ In the course of the fighting that broke out after the so-called aster revolution between the communist council government under Béla Kun and the conservative-reactionary counter-government of Mihály Károlyi .
2. ↑ He bought the property from a large landowner; instead of paying for it with money, however, he made a drainage plan for the land.
3. ↑ The Dutch architect JJP Oud was in personal contact with Bruno Taut.
4. ↑ The emigration Hillinger's from Germany to Turkey succeeded only after several attempts, emigrate to other countries. Bruno Taut was then able to arrange for him an official invitation from abroad, which was necessary for his departure, together with a job offer from the Turkish government. After the establishment of the Turkish Republic (1923), Ataturk had targeted foreign scientists, experienced architects, town planners, artists and cultural workers in the country, who were supposed to help build a modern secular state, reform the universities and build the new capital Ankara . In response to this call, around 800 German speakers, including many persecuted in the “Third Reich”, had come to Turkey by 1945. Together with Hillinger, Hans Grimm , who had worked for Bruno Taut and Franz Hoffmann in their Berlin office since 1914, arrived in Istanbul in 1937 . Other Taut employees who followed him to Turkey were Martin Wagner , Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky and Wilhelm Schütte . Other important planners active in Turkey at the time were Martin Elsaesser , Robert Vorhoelzer , Hans Poelzig , Ernst Egli , Clemens Holzmeister , Fritz Reichl , Paul Bonatz , Ernst Reuter , Gustav Oelsner and Hermann Jansen . Their plans significantly shaped the appearance of the Turkish cities.
5. ↑ Bruno Taut bequeathed part of his collection of Japanese objects to Hillinger. Hillinger had several decades of correspondence with Taut's biographer Kurt Junghanns , which is an essential basis for this biography.
6. ↑ Information in the biographical text about Franz Hillinger for the exhibition at the TU Berlin, 1999 (see references) and in a short portrait on www.archmuseum.org , which gives his daughter Edith Hillinger as the source. Archive link ( Memento from October 30, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
7. ↑ According to information from his son Claude Hillinger in his short biography [1] , also by Edith Hillinger in Kay Flavell: Enchanted Gardens: Edith Hillinger and the Magic of the Real , Botanical Meditations, 2005 archive link ( Memento from December 17, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) , and in Richard Whittaker: Interview: Edith Hillinger , San Francisco, June 24, 2006 [2] .