Hans Stephan (architect)

Hans Stephan (born January 2, 1902 in Dramburg , Pomerania ; † November 28, 1973 in Berlin ) was a German architect who mainly worked in Berlin.

education

After attending grammar school in Neuwied , Hans Stephan began studying architecture at the Technical University of Charlottenburg . After taking his main diploma examination in 1924 , he worked at this university as an assistant to Hermann Jansen , who taught urban planning there . Four years later he passed the second state examination and got a position in the building administration of the city of Berlin.

Activity under Albert Speer

After Stephan had worked in the municipal planning office until 1937, Albert Speer recruited him in his role as general building inspector of the capital. In addition to Rudolf Wolters and Willi Schelkes , Stephan, as head of department, conceived the redesign of Berlin and planned the east-west axis, new housing estates and industrial areas as well as the restructuring of the transport system. After the occupation of Norway in 1940 he worked on behalf of the general building inspector as a consultant for the reconstruction of the destroyed cities. In 1944 Speer appointed him to the task force set up in 1943 for the reconstruction of cities destroyed by bombs , where he was entrusted with the planning of residential buildings. At the same time he was also in charge of reconstruction planning for Berlin and other cities in the Bayreuth and Hessen-Nassau districts .

post war period

Immediately after the Second World War , Stephan lived with relatives in Osterode am Harz and spent a few years there as a freelance architect. His sister was the writer Hanna Stephan, who lives in Osterode. In his years in Osterode (he lived temporarily in the town of Uehrde), Hans Stephan earned a little extra income with portrait painting and woodcuts with motifs from the core town of Osterode. He was also involved in the reconstruction of the destroyed church tower of St. Aegidien. From 1948, despite various protests because of his previous work for the GBI and his membership in the NSDAP, he worked again in Berlin: first active in the municipal building administration, in 1953 he took over the management of regional and urban planning for the Senator for Building and Housing in West Berlin and rose to the position of Senate Building Director in 1956 . There he was involved in planning the Interbau 1957. In 1960 he resigned from his position as Senate Building Director due to political pressure, but continued to work as a freelance architect in Berlin.

He published numerous articles on urban planning and traffic development in German and international specialist magazines. During his time at the GBI, he made numerous satirical drawings, some of which were quite viciously concerned with the Berlin redesign work. Hans Stephan died on November 28, 1973 in Berlin.

Fonts

• Wilhelm Circle . Stalling, Oldenburg 1943.
• The architecture in the Third Reich, especially the redesign of the Reich capital. Junker and Dünnhaupt , Berlin 1939.
• Foundation of a new city. In: Social housing in Germany , No. 2/1942, pp. 77–78.

literature

• Werner Durth : German Architects. Karl Krämer, Stuttgart 2001, ISBN 3-7828-1141-0 .
• Lars Olof and Sabine Larsson: Happy New Design or the Gigantoplanie of Berlin 1937–1943. Albert Speer's general development plan in the mirror of satirical drawings by Hans Stephan. Ludwig, Kiel 2008, ISBN 978-3-937719-69-6 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Hans Stephan in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ The Hansa district. (No longer available online.) Gunnar Klack, archived from the original on February 14, 2010 ; Retrieved April 26, 2012 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
2. ↑ Happy redesign. Architekturmuseum der Technische Universität Berlin, accessed on April 26, 2012 .