Gustav Wilhelm Berringer

Gustav Wilhelm Berringer (born February 17, 1880 in Rostock , † August 17, 1953 in Berlin ) was a German architect and municipal building officer who worked in Rostock in the 1920s as a city architect or city planning director, where he was the most important representative of the new Building was.

Life

Berringer was the son of the building contractor and court builder Ludwig Berringer . He went to school in Rostock and graduated from high school in 1899 before studying structural engineering at the Technical University of Munich , the Technical University of Dresden and the Technical University of (Berlin-) Charlottenburg . In 1905 he enrolled at the University of Rostock , albeit for classical philology. In the same year he passed the main diploma examination and was appointed government building supervisor ( trainee lawyer in the state building administration). In 1906 he did his military service as a one-year volunteer . In the same year he began his traineeship at the Berlin District Building Inspectorate and completed it on March 18, 1910 with the 2nd state examination at the Technical Higher Examination Office in Berlin, whereupon he was appointed government builder ( assessor in the state building administration). In 1910 he married Charlotte Begemann, with whom he had two children.

Berringer went on a study trip to Italy from 1910 to 1911 and then worked as a leading architect in an architecture office in Berlin-Charlottenburg until 1912. After the death of his father in 1913, he went back to Rostock, where he worked as a city architect. 1923 Berringer was appointed city building director and worked in this position until his early retirement in 1934. After the takeover of the Nazis he could continue to work unmolested despite rejection of the architectural style by the supervisor for a while, but after a dispute was laid close to him, the post of City Planning Director to give up. Even in retirement he was still working as a freelance architect in Rostock, then went to Switzerland , to Göttingen and finally to his son in Berlin.

From 1924 he sat on the board of the Rostock Antiquities Association and worked as a museum attendant. Berringer was popular, had a large group of friends, and was a passionate golfer. On the side, he worked with watercolor painting.

Due to the First World War and its aftermath, the first few years of his activity in Rostock were unsuccessful due to the shortage of money and materials. Important construction projects were not started or canceled entirely. The Kurhaus Warnemünde , for example, whose designs Berringer had made after an ideas competition in 1913 and whose foundations and first high-rise buildings had already begun, could not be continued until 1926. The construction of the trade school on Parkstrasse also stalled for a long time.

Berringer's main role in the 1920s was the creation of living space. For this purpose, it was planned to expand the suburbs with multi-storey houses. Planning was carried out for the area around Parkstrasse , Dethardingstrasse and Maßmannstrasse , which was carried out in the style of New Building , the New Objectivity inspired by the Dessau Bauhaus . Further construction areas were the area near the police gardens and along the railway line from Rostock to Warnemünde and Bad Doberan , expansion areas of the city for one and two-family houses, which were supposed to ensure self-sufficiency for the residents in times of need with sufficient gardens and stables.

Inner-city high school in Rostock

Berringer's courageous design of the inner-city high school at the train station, which originally had a flat roof , was given a hipped roof during the National Socialist era and was restored to its original shape in the course of renovation in 2007, the crematorium at the New Cemetery and the Warnemünder Kurhaus were also found by many Critics who were hostile to modern architecture. Artists with whom Berringer worked, such as the sculptor Margarete Scheel , who created the figures at the trade school, the glass painter and graphic artist Bruno Gimpel , who realized the interior of the crematorium, and Dörte Helm , who took on the artistic design of the Kurhaus in Warnemünde, appreciated Berringer's work and enjoyed working with him.

Honors

In Rostock, a street in the Dierkow district was named after Berringer.

literature

• Bernfried Lichtnau: Gustav Wilhelm Berringer (1880–1953). A Rostock city planning director and architect between late historicism and modernity. In: Contributions to the history of the city of Rostock , Volume 31 (2011), pp. 111–190.

Web links

• Short biography of Berringer. Culture portal Mecklenburg, historical persons

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Hannes Rother: Biographical information on Ludwig Berringer (1851-1913). Retrieved April 9, 2014 . 
2. ^ Enrollment of Gustav Berringer. In: Rostocker matriculation portal . Retrieved April 9, 2014 .