Hans Poelzig

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Hans Poelzig around 1927 on a photograph by Alexander Binder

Hans Poelzig (born April 30, 1869 in Berlin ; † June 14, 1936 there ) was a German architect , painter , set designer , film architect and university lecturer . Above all, his contributions to Expressionist architecture and New Objectivity made him known.

His children were the architect Peter Poelzig (1906–1981), the actress Ruth Poelzig (1904–1996) and, from his second marriage to Marlene Moeschke-Poelzig (1894–1985), the actor and Darmstadt drama director Jochen Poelzig.

Life

Berlin memorial plaque in Rosa-Luxemburg-Strasse 30 in Berlin-Mitte
tomb

Hans Poelzig was born on April 30, 1869 in Berlin (other sources name Pölzig ) as the sixth child of Countess Clara Henriette von Poelzig. His mother was the daughter of Alexander von Hanstein Graf von Pölzig and Beiersdorf . Her husband, the British shipowner George Acland Ames, however, denied paternity and divorced Clara three months after the child was born. Hans's last name was therefore not Ames, but Poelzig and was raised by foster parents, the choir conductor Emil Liese and his wife, in Stolpe , now a district of Berlin-Wannsee .

After completing primary school, Poelzig moved to the Victoria Gymnasium in Potsdam in May 1879 .

From 1889 to 1894 Poelzig studied structural engineering at the Technical University (Berlin-) Charlottenburg . In 1899 he was employed as a government master builder ( Assessor ) in the Prussian Ministry of Public Works . In the same year he married Maria Voss, with whom he had four children.

Poelzig's career began with the appointment as a teacher of style at the Royal School of Arts and Crafts in Breslau ; In 1903 he became its director. Already strongly committed to Expressionism , he made the institution known as the Royal Academy for Building and Applied Arts from 1911 one of the most progressive architecture and art schools in Germany. In 1916 Poelzig succeeded Hans Erlwein as the city ​​councilor in Dresden and in 1919 became chairman of the Deutscher Werkbund , which he helped shape and which today also represents the New Objectivity .

Since 1918 he had a close friendship and working group with the sculptor and architect Marlene Moeschke , who became his second wife in 1924. The couple had three children.

From 1920 he worked again in Berlin and headed a master studio for architecture at the Berlin Academy of the Arts . In 1921 he took part in the competition that has gone down in architectural history for the redevelopment of a prominently placed area at Berlin Friedrichstrasse station . Two years later he was appointed professor at the Technical University of Berlin. A heated discourse developed between Poelzig and Heinrich Tessenow, who was once sponsored by him, about the content and type of training for young architects.

In the transition from handcrafted production to industrial production, Poelzig received this development in his Berlin years and created the basis for the New Objectivity in architecture. What he called the material style , due to its simplicity, brought out the properties of the materials used much more strongly than the ornamental style of the time. In 1926 Poelzig became a board member of the Association of German Architects (BDA) and continued to work in the “ Der Ring ” community. In 1929 he was awarded Technische Hochschule Stuttgart , the honorary doctorate . From 1929 to 1930, the studio and residential building for the family at Tannenbergallee 28 in Berlin-Westend was built according to his wife's plans .

In 1931 the Berlin Academy of the Arts designed the exhibition “Poelzig and his School”. From January 1, 1933, he was director of the United State Schools for Free and Applied Art in Berlin, which he had to leave again on April 10 at the instigation of the National Socialists .

The right-wing press accused him of being a "Baubolschewik" because he had taken part in the competition for a theater in Charkov (then the Soviet Union) in 1930 and a Soviet palace in Moscow in 1931. This has been equated with an advocacy of communism. The attacks continued even after the Nazis "seized power". Poelzig repeatedly denied the claim that he was of Jewish descent.

In 1935 Poelzig received first prize for his design for a theater and concert hall in Istanbul . For this project but also to negotiate a contract as a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Istanbul for three years, he traveled to Istanbul twice.

On November 30, 1935, after reaching the age limit of 65 years, he resigned from his offices as head of a master's atelier at the Prussian Academy of the Arts and as a teacher at the Technical University.

On June 14, 1936, Hans Poelzig died of a third stroke. He was buried on June 17th in the village cemetery of Wannsee . The grave of honor maintained by the State of Berlin is located in Department 9W.

In 1937, his wife had to close her studio under pressure from the National Socialists.

The Akademie der Künste honored Hans Poelzig again in 2008 in an exhibition in which the artist's works and estate were shown.

plant

  • Office and commercial building in Wroclaw

  • Berlin, development on the edge of Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz ( Babylon cinema )

  • South facade of the Poelzig building of the Goethe University Frankfurt am Main, built as the administration building of IG Farben

  • Gas station draft (1927–1928) for the Reichskraftsprit

  • " House of Radio " in Berlin, Masurenallee

  • Construction detail of the facade on the administration building from 1923 in Hanover

  • Mosaic fountain in the Great Garden in Dresden

Buildings and designs

  • 1903–1906: Extension of the town hall in Löwenberg (Silesia) (today Lwówek Śląski , Poland)
  • 1906: Parish church in Maltsch (Silesia) (today Malczyce , Poland)
  • 1908–1914: Klingenberg dam
  • before 1909: Apartment building in Breslau
  • 1910: Competition design for a Bismarck national monument on the Elisenhöhe near Bingerbrück (together with the sculptor Theodor von Gosen ; not awarded a prize)
  • 1911: Water tower with market hall, so-called "Upper Silesia Tower", in Poznan (only the foundation preserved as the substructure of the Iglica tower of the Poznań fair)
  • 1911: Commercial building in Wroclaw, Junkernstrasse (today Ofiar Oświęcimskich ul.)
  • 1911–1912: Factory for the Moritz Milch & Co. chemical factory in Luban (Polish: Luboń ) near Posen (only partially preserved)
  • 1911–1913: Pergola, exhibition building ( four-domed pavilion ) and restaurant for the 1913 exhibition of the century in Breslau
  • 1913–1915: "Annagrube" building in Pschow (today Pszów , Poland)
  • 1916: Competition design for the House of Friendship in Istanbul
  • 1917: Drafts for an office building for the city administration in Dresden
  • 1918–1919: Reconstruction of the large theater in Berlin (destroyed)
With this much-publicized renovation, Poelzig created a Europe-wide reputation.

painting

Since Poelzig repeatedly revised his paintings, the dates of the creation are very indefinite:

  • started 1918: Apocalyptic Horsemen
  • 1919/1920 to 1930: Blocksberg
  • Early 1920s to 1930: Don Quixote
  • Mid-1920s to 1930, unfinished: three women, child and death
  • 1928–1931: mountain landscape
  • Mid-1920s to 1931: Carnival

Stage sets, films and film architecture

In addition to his many industrial and commercial buildings, Poelzig has also made a name for himself as a designer of stage sets and film scenarios since the beginning of the 1920s . The best known is the expressionist urban architecture that he designed for Paul Wegener's film The Golem, How He Came Into the World (1920), and Grieshuus Castle for Zur Chronik von Grieshuus (1923–1925, directed by Arthur von Gerlach ), which stayed for several years on the Ufa site in Neubabelsberg and was used as Norfolk Castle in the film Maria Stuart (1927, directed by Friedrich Feher , Leopold Jessner ).

In the horror film The Black Cat (1934, directed by Edgar G. Ulmer ), the first joint film by Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff , Karloff plays the fictional architect Hjalmar Poelzig, the middle of the Hungarian steppe his house in the style of New Objectivity on built the ruins of a fortress destroyed in the First World War, of which he was in command, and in whose cellar he celebrates black masses.

In 2004, the foyer of Poelzig's Großes Schauspielhaus was recreated for theater director Max Reinhardt as a backdrop for the Japanese film Godzilla : Final Wars . The foyer there represents the interior of an alien spaceship.

Fonts

  • Architectural issues. In: The art paper. 1922, volume 4, pp. 153-163 (part 1), and volume 5, pp. 191-199 (part 2). This is a copy of a lecture he gave on February 25, 1922 in Berlin.
  • From the building of our time . In: Die Form, Vol. 1, 1922, Issue 1, pp. 16–29 ( digital copy ).

Appreciation

The Hans-Poelzig Street in Frankfurt-Kalbach was named in April 2013 after it. In the Berlin district of Hakenfelde there is also a street named after him, on which his construction of the factory for the Dr. Cassirer & Co. AG is located. The secondary school in Klingenberg- Sachsenhof has been named after him since 2015 .

On November 18, 2015 the Friedrichstadt-Palast Berlin inaugurated a memorial in honor of its founders Max Reinhardt , Hans Poelzig and Erik Charell at Friedrichstrasse 107.

literature

Web links

Commons : Hans Poelzig  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Ulrike Eichhorn: Hans Poelzig in Berlin. Edition Eichhorn, Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-8442-9823-9 .
  2. ↑ Personal details . In: Art Chronicle. Vol. NF 27 (1916) No. 26, column 253.
  3. ↑ His design was illustrated and discussed in the magazine Das Kunstblatt (Issue 3, 1922, pp. 132-133).
  4. ^ A b Petition to save the Poelzig villa
  5. ↑ Wolfgang Pehnt: Will to express . In: Wolfgang Pehnt, Matthias Schirren (Ed.): Hans Poelzig. Architect, teacher, artist . 2007, p. 41-42 .
  6. ↑ a b c d Wolfgang Pehnt, Matthias Schirren: Hans Poelzig. 1869 to 1936. Architect, teacher, artist . Deutsche Verlags-Antalt (DVA), Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-421-03623-0 , OCLC 959170422 . DNB 984782710
  7. ^ Nikolaus Bernau: More than Rococo Expressionism. In: Berliner Zeitung of January 3, 2008.
  8. ↑ Der Baumeister , year 1909, issue 2
  9. ↑ Max Schmid (ed.): One hundred designs from the competition for the Bismarck National Monument on the Elisenhöhe near Bingerbrück-Bingen. Düsseldorfer Verlagsanstalt, Düsseldorf 1911. (n. Pag.)
  10. ↑ Andrea Gottdang: Program and Propaganda. Hans Poelzig's preliminary project for the Salzburg Festival Hall . In: INSITU. Zeitschrift für Architekturgeschichte 2 (2/2009), pp. 223–240.
  11. ^ P. Paul Zalewski: Hans Poelzig in Hanover. In: Reports on the preservation of monuments in Lower Saxony, publication of the Lower Saxony State Office for the Preservation of Monuments. 28th year 2008, issue 2, pp. 49–54 and Matthias Schmidt: Hans Poelzig in Hanover. To the former administrative building of the Meyer textile factory in Hanover-Vinnhorst In: Reports on the preservation of monuments in Lower Saxony. 3/1983.
  12. ↑ Kino Deli. December 11, 2018, accessed March 15, 2019 .
  13. ^ WL: Hans Poelzig's German movie theater in Breslau . In: Die Form, Vol. 2, 1927, pp. 153–156 ( digitized version ).
  14. ↑ Joachim Kleinmanns: Super, full! A brief cultural history of the gas station. Jonas Verlag, Marburg 2002, p. 86.
  15. ^ Campus Westend. (PDF) Johann Wolfgang Goethe University Frankfurt am Main, July 2018, accessed on February 26, 2020 (map).
  16. ^ Karl R. Kegler: Godzilla meets Poelzig. In: archimaera. Issue 2/2009; archimaera.de (PDF).
  17. ↑ Official Journal for Frankfurt am Main , Volume 144, No. 17, City of Frankfurt am Main, April 23, 2013 ( frankfurt.de ( Memento of May 21, 2014 in the Internet Archive ; PDF; 5 MB)).
  18. ↑ Hans-Poelzig-Strasse. In: Street name lexicon of the Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein (near  Kaupert )
  19. ↑ Dirk Jericho: The Friedrichstadt-Palast honors its founding fathers. In: Berlin Week . November 16, 2015, accessed February 26, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Poelzig, Hans
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German architect and university professor
DATE OF BIRTH April 30, 1869
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH June 14, 1936
Place of death Berlin