Friedrich Wilhelm Buttel

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Friedrich Wilhelm Buttel.
Oil portrait by Wilhelm Unger , around 1830

Friedrich Wilhelm Buttel (born December 1, 1796 in Zielenzig ; † November 4, 1869 in Neustrelitz ) was a German architect and the highest-ranking building official in the (partial) Grand Duchy of Mecklenburg-Strelitz . As a student at the Berlin Building Academy and an employee of Karl Friedrich Schinkel , he shaped the classicist and neo-Gothic architecture in Mecklenburg-Strelitz with an independent, graceful design language. At the same time he developed numerous practical solutions for the construction industry. He is also considered to be the inventor of the roofing felt .

Life

Youth and education

Prototype:
Karl Friedrich Schinkel

Friedrich Wilhelm Buttel was the son of master bricklayer Johann Gottlieb Buttel and his wife, the clothmaker's daughter Anna Dorothea, née. Schnetzke. He grew up in Meseritz and passed his journeyman's examination as a bricklayer there on November 23, 1813. Self-taught, he dealt with surveying and got a job as a practical surveyor with a royal chief forester named König in Birnbaum . Then he volunteered to fight Napoleon in the 1st Pomeranian Infantry Regiment . There he was a volunteer hunter in the Fusilier Battalion and fought successfully in the Battle of Waterloo . For his bravery, when he retired from military service on January 7, 1816, he was given the rank of second lieutenant . From November 15, 1816 to 1819, he studied mathematics, fine arts and architecture in Berlin. At the Berlin Bauakademie he met Karl Friedrich Schinkel , and at the Akademie der Künste he was influenced by drawing lessons from Johann Gottfried Schadow .

He finished his studies in 1819 with an exam as a building conductor, the certificate was signed by the director of the building academy Johann Albert Eytelwein and by Schinkel. Under his direction, he entered Prussian service and worked as a government building manager on bridging the Opera Canal, building the Neue Wache and renovating the Berlin Cathedral . According to today's understanding, the position should have corresponded to a senior civil engineer. In addition, he was preparing for the major building exam, but then, due to a change in position, “in the short space of time he was unable to take the architectural certificate”.

Builder in Neustrelitz

Patron and regent:
Grand Duke Georg

At the age of 24, Buttel was accepted as a civil servant in the building administration of the Mecklenburg-Strelitz state government in Neustrelitz through the advocacy of Schinkel . In 1822 Buttel married Emilie Dunckelberg (1801–1861), a daughter of the master builder Friedrich Wilhelm Dunckelberg (1773–1844). Eleven children were born in this marriage, including the lawyer and later Neustrelitz mayor Hermann Buttel (1823-1891). In his spare time, Buttel cultivated his artistic talents. Oil paintings, watercolors and drawings were created. Buttel played the piano and his shared love of music was a friendly bond with the singer Eduard Ruscheweyh (1792–1868), the younger brother of the engraver Ferdinand Ruscheweyh .

Grand Duke Georg was a sovereign lord who was keen to build, in whose service Buttel, who was influenced by the Schinkel School , was promoted to court architect in 1823 and was able to demonstrate his architectural and landscape design skills. Buttel was significantly involved in numerous building projects of the Grand Duke and many country nobles followed the example of their sovereign and commissioned the classicist architect to plan new or redesign existing mansions. In 1832 he was appointed building officer. In the same year the multi-year construction work on the Marienkirche in Neubrandenburg began under his direction. The inauguration took place on August 12, 1841. Grand Duke Georg thanked Buttel in a letter for this building "as your most important achievement, which is truly your honor".

Buttel published articles in the Mecklenburgisches Wochenblatt as well as numerous specialist articles on questions of architecture and technology, for example on the improvement of combustion systems, room heating and hydraulic mortar. His contribution to the construction of flat roofs was considered to be groundbreaking . In 1842 his monograph Practical Experiences on Dorn's Roofs appeared along with a detailed description, cost calculation and drawing of such constructions, which give them greater duration and impermeability, and an appendix on flat roofs in economic buildings . In it he first described the tarred roofing felt for covering classicist flat roofs and can probably be regarded as its inventor.

Time for further successes, end of life

Orangery Neustrelitz
Neustrelitz Castle Church
New Neustrelitz cemetery: Mausoleum of the Buttel family

On December 26, 1848 Buttel became a member of the building department , the department in building affairs was subordinate to him. Finally, in 1860, he was promoted to senior building officer. This gave him a similar position in the small Grand Duchy of Mecklenburg-Strelitz as Schinkel did in the great Kingdom of Prussia: Buttel was responsible for the entire construction industry, he shaped an independent regional style and optimized the aesthetic design of the building projects in this part of Mecklenburg. Particularly prestigious were the renovation of the Neustrelitz orangery , which took place in 1842 with the participation of Schinkel and Friedrich August Stülers , and the construction of the castle church there from 1855 to 1859. The castle church with its statues of the four evangelists modeled by Albert Wolf above the portal is considered to be Buttel's main work. The church in Batalha , Portugal, served as his inspiration .

In 1860 Buttel was honored as a knight of the Hanoverian Guelph Order . On October 10, 1866, Grand Duke Friedrich Wilhelm awarded him the Knight's Cross of the House Order of the Wendish Crown .

In addition to his work as a master builder, Buttel was also interested in technical problem solutions: he designed molded bricks and terracotta , developed a whipping machine for the Radeland brickworks , a flame furnace system with two chambers for a brickworks in Grünow and furnace systems for the ducal kitchen in Neustrelitz Castle. Numerous bridges, new wells, locks and water pipes were built under his overhead line . He rehabilitated the new canal and the port of Neustrelitz. As a building surveyor, he was able to successfully help with the infestation of the Fränkel Foundation's hospital with dry rot in Wroclaw after previous costly attempts had failed.

He also made numerous trips to Berlin for further training, where he repeatedly consulted with Schinkel and Stüler, but also to the Walhalla near Regensburg, to the Ulm Minster , to Paris and England, which was technically leading at the time. There he visited the London industrial exhibition in 1863 to gain new knowledge for the principality. On the recommendation of the Grand Duchess, he was granted access to castles and technical facilities. He was particularly impressed by the Thames tunnel.

Buttel's apartment was in the Altes Palais on the corner of Tiergartenstrasse and Schlossstrasse. When he, who had already passed the age of 70, was additionally made to look after the buildings of the North German Confederation in Mecklenburg-Strelitz in 1869 , his strength went downhill significantly. His eyesight was poor and he was heavily overworked. His retirement had been postponed several times. His wife was seriously ill for many years and was most recently bedridden. Structural damage to the castle church and the loss of his wife wore him down so much that he was no longer able to cope with the pressure and took his own life. Shortly after his suicide , the memoirs of Friedrich Wilhelm Buttel appeared anonymously in Berlin , written by the Neustrelitz teacher Jacob Friedrich Roloff (1813–1877). A mausoleum for Buttel and his family is in the new cemetery (forest cemetery) of Neustrelitz.

Gothic as German art

Marienkirche in Neubrandenburg , renovated and redesigned by Buttel

Buttel's conception of architecture is particularly clear in his travel reports to the Walhalla and the Ulm Minster. As an example, he defends himself against the pure reproduction of antiquity in classicism and pleads for a continuation of the Gothic language of form:

" May the Lord of Klenze talk literary, as much as he wants, the Walhalla is and will be a copy of the Parthenon , [...] but it is not Ehrendom for large German spirits, which would have been to my mind also German art worthy and appropriate. […] In the field of forms, Greek art is complete and complete, further development of forms has only led to poorer times and art, German art is not so complete, it is still capable of varied training. "

- Friedrich Wilhelm Buttel

In contrast, he is enthusiastic about the Gothic style of the Ulm Minster :

“ Big, beautiful building, your forms strive upwards, elevating the spirit, making you worship! It is difficult to see truly great things and to create truly great things with simple means. "

- Friedrich Wilhelm Buttel

Buttel sees the spiritual dimension of the architecture primarily embodied in the towers, as is clear from his address to the laying of the foundation stone of the Malchow monastery tower in 1842:

“ On its battlements, where the gaze can wander far and wide and enjoy God's beautiful nature, where the chest breathes purer air and where the human being is further from the disturbances of earthly life, the spirit feels unleashed and closer to the eternal and supernatural than down here. […] Towers, the tips of which are elegantly shaped and lightly growing into the blue ether like petrified flowers, show how the gaze should turn skywards. "

- Friedrich Wilhelm Buttel

Works

Lifting temple in Neustrelitz Castle Park (1845, Photo: 2015)
City Church Fürstenberg / Havel (1845–1849)
Town hall Neustrelitz (1840–1843)

literature

  • Friedrich Wilhelm Buttel: Practical experiences about Dornsche roofs together with a detailed description, cost calculation and drawing of such constructions, which give them greater duration and tightness, and an appendix about the flat roofs in economical buildings. G. Barnewitz Publishing House, Neustrelitz 1842.
  • Jacob Friedrich Roloff: Memories of Friedrich Wilhelm Buttel. Commissionsverlag Gustav Lange, Berlin 1870.
  • Hans Müther: Friedrich Wilhelm Buttels life and his church buildings. Neubrandenburg 1936. (At the same time dissertation, Technical University Braunschweig, 1935)
  • Gerlinde Kienitz: Friedrich Wilhelm Buttel 1796–1869. Museum of the City of Neustrelitz, Neustrelitz 1996.
  • Sabine Bock : Friedrich Wilhelm Buttel (1796–1869). Strelitz court architect and sought-after private architect of knightly mansions. In: Melanie Ehler, Matthias Müller (ed.): Schinkel and his students. Thomas Helms Verlag, Schwerin 2004. ISBN 978-3-935749-34-3 , pp. 129-142.
  • Sabine Bock: Friedrich-Wilhelm Buttel. In: Biographical Lexicon for Mecklenburg. Volume 5. Schmidt-Römhild, Rostock 2009, pp. 94-98.

Web links

Commons : Friedrich Wilhelm Buttel  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Sabine Bock : Friedrich Wilhelm Buttel (1796–1869). In: Melanie Ehler, Matthias Müller (ed.): Schinkel and his students. Thomas Helms Verlag, Schwerin 2004, p. 130.
  2. ^ So in the letter of March 14, 1821 to the Grand Ducal Chamber of Mecklenburg-Strelitz
  3. ↑ Extra sheet of the privileged Grand Ducal Mecklenburg-Strelitzer Zeitung, issue no. 5, year 2014
  4. ↑ Roloff: Memories of FW Buttel. P. 14.
  5. ↑ State Office for Culture and Monument Preservation / State Archive / Year 2009 / Archive of the Month December [1]  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.kulturwerte-mv.de  
  6. ↑ Meckl. Strel. Official scoreboard. - Neustrelitz (1866–11-04) = No. 15. - p. 69. [Not for OHM-HIERONYMUSES]
  7. ↑ Quoted from Roloff: Memories of Fr. W. Buttel, p. 16.
  8. ↑ Quoted from Roloff: Memories of Fr. W. Buttel, p. 17.
  9. ↑ Quoted from Roloff: Memories of Fr. W. Buttel, p. 22 f.
personal data
SURNAME Buttel, Friedrich Wilhelm
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German architect, building officer in the Grand Duchy of Mecklenburg-Strelitz
DATE OF BIRTH December 1, 1796
PLACE OF BIRTH Targeted
DATE OF DEATH November 4, 1869
Place of death Neustrelitz