Friedrich Holtz (architect)

Friedrich Louis Otto Holtz (born April 9, 1897 in Rügenwalde ; † February 28, 1994 in Darmstadt ) was a German architect and head of the Darmstadt State University Tree.

Life

Friedrich Holtz was born in April 1897 in the small town of Rügenwalde in Pomerania. From 1909 he attended the humanistic grammar school in the neighboring district town of Stolp , where he graduated from high school in 1915. Then he volunteered for military service. After the end of the First World War, he studied architecture from 1919 at the Technical University of Danzig , the Technical University of Munich and from 1921 at the Technical University of Darmstadt . He completed his studies in the summer semester of 1923 with a degree in engineering. From September 1, 1923 he worked in the civil service. Initially he was a government building manager at the State Building Office in Bensheim, and later a government building master in Darmstadt and Gießen. During this time he drew a. a. responsible for building projects at the then Ludwig University in Gießen and for the Hessian State Library in Darmstadt Castle and for the Hessian State Archives in Darmstadt. In November 1936 he was appointed government building officer.

In 1937 Holtz became a consultant in the construction department in the Hessian Ministry of Finance. Here he supervised the construction project at the TH Darmstadt. For the four-year plan institute for pulp and paper chemistry under the direction of Georg Jayme , a spacious building was built according to plans by Karl Lieser on Alexanderstraße / corner of Ballonplatz. The four-year plan institute for technical physics of plastics (headed by Richard Vieweg ) received a new building based on plans by Karl Gruber (architectural historian) . In addition, Holtz supervised the new building for the inorganic and physical chemistry, which was also built according to plans by Karl Lieser at Herrngarten.

After the beginning of the Second World War he was drafted into military service. At the end of the war he was taken prisoner and did not return to Darmstadt until 1948. In 1948 Friedrich Holtz became head of the construction department of the Darmstadt regional council, which was newly founded in 1945. In 1951 he spent four months in the Hessian state building administration in the new state capital Wiesbaden, until he finally became head of the state university building authority in Darmstadt. Here he succeeded Christoph Miller , who surprisingly gave up the office after almost a year. In 1961 he was appointed to the head of the office and in 1962 he was promoted to government building director. In April 1963, Friedrich Holtz retired at the age of 66. He died in Darmstadt in 1994 at the old age of almost 97.

As the head of the State University Building Office, he was initially concerned with clearing the remaining rubble on the university campus in downtown Darmstadt. This was followed by the reconstruction of the first buildings. First, the Otto-Berndt-Halle was renovated in 1951/52 with McCloy funds and set up as a cafeteria. Holtz and his office soon realized that building the TH only made sense within the framework of an extensive planning and construction program. His office therefore drafted a first four-year plan in 1953/54, which provided for an investment sum of 20 million marks between 1955 and 1958 and was also approved by the State of Hesse. This was followed by a second four-year plan from 1959 to 1962, which included further investments of almost 75 million marks.

The hydraulic engineering hall built in 1954/55 by Ernst Neufert in Rundeturmstrasse, the large physics lecture hall in 1955 based on plans by Günter Koch (architect) and Wilhelm Lehnert on Hochschulstrasse, and the German Plastics Institute 1955–1957 based on plans by Günter Koch in Schlossgartenstrasse , the Stoeferlehalle in 1954 (demolished in 2014) in Alexanderstraße and the new buildings for the Institute for Statics and Steel Construction by Günter Koch and the Institute for Solid Construction 1955–56 by Theo Pabst also on Alexanderstraße. The last two buildings mentioned were demolished in 2004.

In addition, office buildings and workshops and a new power plant in Magdalenstrasse were built for the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering. This was followed between 1960 and 1963 by the material testing institute in Grafenstrasse and the German data center initiated by Alwin Walther in Rheinstrasse, which was opened in mid-1962.

In the more than twenty years of Friedrich Holtz's tenure as head of the State University Building Authority in Darmstadt, the TH Darmstadt recorded an area increase of almost 100,000 square meters.

Awards

In November 1954, a boiler house at the Technical University in Magdalenenstrasse in Darmstadt was named an “exemplary building in the state of Hesse” by a jury convened by the Association of German Architects and the Hessian Minister of Finance . The jury included the following architects: Werner Hebebrand , Konrad Rühl , Sep Ruf and Ernst Zinsser . The building was designed by the State University Building Authority in Darmstadt, and the construction management was in the hands of Oberregierungsbaurat Holtz.

literature

• Friedrich Holtz. In: Technische Universität Darmstadt (Hrsg.): Reconstruction and expansion. The State University Building Authority Darmstadt 1949–1988. Darmstadt 2014, p. 69.
• City of Science Darmstadt (Ed.): The Technical University of Darmstadt. A history of construction. Darmstadt 2007.
• He shaped the face of the new TH. In: Darmstädter Echo . 1./2. May 1963.
• Melanie Hanel: Normality under exceptional conditions. The TH Darmstadt under National Socialism. Darmstadt 2014.
• Hans Köhler: Reconstruction and new building of the TH Darmstadt. In: Baukunst und Werkform . Volume 2, 1958, pp. 68-86.
• Isabel Schmidt: The TH Darmstadt in the post-war period (1945–1960). Dissertation, Darmstadt 2014.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Award for exemplary buildings in the state of Hesse on November 6, 1954 . In: The Hessian Minister of Finance (Hrsg.): State Gazette for the State of Hesse. 1955 no. 4 , p. 70 , point 75 ( online at the information system of the Hessian state parliament [PDF; 3.6 MB ]).