Gerhard Kosel

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Kosel (second from left) in 1957 during the Congress of German Architects in Leipzig

Gerhard Kosel (born February 18, 1909 in Schreiberhau ( Riesengebirge ), † September 21, 2003 in Berlin ) was a German architect, president of the GDR Building Academy and deputy minister for construction.

Life

Kosel, who was born in the Lower Silesian town of Schreiberhau, today the Polish town of Szklarska Poręba , as the son of a master plumber and grew up there, initially did an apprenticeship as a plumber and bricklayer before studying architecture at the TH Munich and TH Berlin from 1927 to 1931 Bruno Taut and Hans Poelzig graduated. During his studies he went to Seville in 1929 to work as a designer. As a student at TH Berlin, he belonged to the Red Student Club and in 1931 became a member of the KPD .

From 1932 he worked as a specialist in the Soviet Union. There he worked in particular as an architect and designer in the Magnitogorsk ironworks combine and on the large construction site in Novokuznetsk . In 1936 he moved to Moscow . In the course of the spread of National Socialism , he was stripped of his German citizenship in 1938, and from 1941 he was included in the Gestapo's special wanted list. During the Second World War he worked for the defense industry and was chief engineer at a construction company in Tomsk , where he also taught at an engineering school. Kosel designed the opera house in the Mongolian capital Ulaanbaatar , which was completed in 1948 . After the war he was employed as an employee of the project planning facilities of the NKVD or MGB near Ostashkow and designed, among other things, buildings for nuclear research centers and centers for the development of missile technology.

In September 1954 he moved to the GDR and became head of department in the Ministry of Development. In 1955 he was promoted to State Secretary and was involved in the expansion of type project planning and the industrialization of construction in the GDR. From 1958 to 1967 he was a member of the Central Committee of the SED. In 1961 he succeeded Kurt Liebknecht as President of the Deutsche Bauakademie (DBA). He held this office until 1965, when there was a conflict with the SED leadership. At the same time, Kosel was deprived of overall responsibility for the construction of the Berlin television tower . From 1967 to 1972 he became Deputy Minister for Construction and from 1977 to 1984 he was the representative of the GDR in the UN Commission on Human Settlements .

In June 1989 he accompanied Erich Honecker on a visit to the USSR and stayed with him at her old place of work, Magnitogorsk.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall , Kosel entered into a legal dispute with Hermann Henselmann and the architectural group of VEB Industrieprojektierung Berlin, in which he claimed sole copyright to the design of the Berlin television tower .

His grave is in the central cemetery in Berlin-Friedrichsfelde in the burial complex for the victims and persecuted of the Nazi regime .

Awards

Publications (selection)

author
  • Fernsehturm Berlin: on the history of its construction and its builders , Nova Verlag, 2003, ISBN 978-3-936735-34-5 .
  • (Ed.) Deutsche Bauakademie: Problems of complex flow production in industrial construction , Verlag für Bauwesen, Berlin 1963.
Participation
  • (Ed.) Ministry of Building, German Building Academy: Technically based material consumption standards , Berlin 1960.
  • (Ed.) Ministry of Building, German Building Academy: Housing: Type building card sheets , Verlag für Bauwesen, Berlin 1960.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Congratulations on your 50th birthday in Neues Deutschland on February 18, 1959
  2. ^ New Germany of June 29, 1989
personal data
SURNAME Kosel, Gerhard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German architect and president of the Bauakademie
DATE OF BIRTH February 18, 1909
PLACE OF BIRTH Schreiberhau
DATE OF DEATH September 21, 2003
Place of death Berlin