Georg Pniower

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Georg Wolf Theodor Béla Pniower (born April 29, 1896 in Breslau ; † March 14, 1960 in Berlin ) was a gardener, landscape architect and professor of gardening and regional culture in Berlin. In Berlin in the 1920s and 1930s in particular, he designed gardens of avant-garde villas, but also allotments and residential complexes. Even in the period after the Second World War, he pleaded for resource-saving, planned maintenance of the land. Together with Reinhold Lingner, he is considered to be the most important landscape planner in the GDR. Since he lived and taught in East Berlin after the Second World War, Georg Pniower received little attention for a long time; It was not until the 1990s that his work was “rediscovered”.

Life

Georg Pniower learned the gardening trade from 1911, then worked in the municipal garden administrations in Trier and Beuthen . From 1916 to 1920 Pniower studied horticultural technology with interruptions in Proskau in Silesia. He received his professional stamping primarily during the Weimar Republic . In 1920/1921 he worked as a garden technician in the horticultural department in Hanover . This was followed by further training in gardening schools as well as at the Technical University of Hanover and at the Düsseldorf Art Academy . Pniower was trained as a horticultural inspector in Proskau in 1922/1923. In addition, from 1922 to 1925 Pniower worked for the Berlin companies Ludwig Späth and Hermann Rothe as a senior garden architect and then worked as a freelance garden and landscape architect and consultant for the provincial association of allotment gardeners of Greater Berlin .

Until 1933 Pniower was a member of the SPD . Due to his Jewish descent, Pniower was classified by the National Socialists as a " half-Jew " in 1933 and excluded from the Reich Chamber of Fine Arts in 1935 , which was equivalent to a professional ban because it made it impossible to work as a freelancer. When he transferred his office to his wife Ruth, who was also a landscape planner and “Aryan”, she was also excluded from the Reich Chamber in 1936. Pniower emigrated to England in 1938. In 1939, however, he returned to Germany and was called up for military service for a short time and then ran a vegetable market from 1940. In 1944 he was arrested and committed to forced labor in the Zehlendorf textile factory .

After the end of the war he received his first commissions from the western allies in Berlin and in 1946 was appointed full professor and holder of the chair for garden design at the agricultural faculty of the University of Berlin , which was located in Berlin-Dahlem. In 1951 Pniower left the west of Berlin and established the chair for garden art and landscape design at the Humboldt University in Berlin and became director of the institute for garden art and landscape design at the agricultural and horticultural faculty of the Humboldt University. The previous institute building in Dahlem Albrecht-Thaer-Weg went to the Technical University. Pniower called for a more modern environmental law to be passed in the 1950s. But he was unable to assert himself against the conservationists headed by the botanist and plant sociologist Hermann Meusel . In 1960 Pniower was awarded a doctorate. Pniower died on March 14, 1960 in Berlin; he received an honorary grave from the city at the new Baumschulenweg cemetery .

Act

Sunbathing lawn in the Volkspark Wilmersdorf

Under Pniower's direction, the gardens of the Heimat estate were built in Siemensstadt from 1930 onwards , which have been largely preserved to this day. Other works by Pniower in Berlin are

Pniower saw it as the task of the landscape planners to “serve public health”. In doing so, they should "provide people with sufficient air, light, sun and space to move around (...) and thereby reduce the susceptibility to disease and the spread of typical civilization epidemics (...)."

literature

  • Helmut Giese, Siegfried Sommer: Prof. Dr. Georg Béla Pniower - the life and work of an important garden and landscape architect. Dresden 2005, ISBN 3-86005-465-1 .
  • Joachim Wolschke-Bulmahn , Peter Fibich: From the sun round to the exemplary landscape. Institute for Green Planning and Garden Architecture, Hannover 2004, ISBN 3-923517-60-2 .
  • Wolfgang Schächen : Siemens buildings in Siemensstadt - housing developments. Konopka, Berlin 1995.
  • Willi Oberkrome : German homeland. National conception and regional practice of nature conservation, landscape design and cultural policy in Westphalia-Lippe and Thuringia (1900–1960). Schöningh, Paderborn et al. 2004, ISBN 3-506-71693-X .
  • Volker Wagner [with incorrect information about the father]:  Pniower, Georg Bela . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 2. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .
  • Windbarriere - a work for Georg Pniower , a landscape art project by Wieland Krause, catalog, Kunstverein Röderhof, wortraum Edition 2001, ISBN 3-936174-02-4

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Excursus: The garden architect Georg Wolf Theodor Bela Pniower , p. 32 in: Concept for the repair and maintenance of the historical garden Wildpfad 26 Berlin-Grunewald, 29 August 2012
personal data
SURNAME Pniower, Georg
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Pniower, Georg Wolf Theodor Béla (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German landscape architect
DATE OF BIRTH April 29, 1896
PLACE OF BIRTH Wroclaw
DATE OF DEATH March 14, 1960
Place of death Berlin