Hans Wittfoht

Hans Wittfoht (born November 26, 1924 in Wittingen ; † August 26, 2011 in Hamburg ) was a German civil engineer and entrepreneur .

Life

Hans Wittfoht acquired in the Second World War the Notabitur and served as a soldier in the artillery . After the war he initially worked as a bricklayer in Hamburg for the construction company Polensky & Zöllner before studying civil engineering at the Technical University of Karlsruhe from 1947 to 1951 .

He then went back to work for Polensky & Zöllner, where he took over the management of the prestressed concrete department in 1952 . There he dealt with the still young prestressed concrete bridge construction and was involved, among other things, in the further development of the cantilever structure and the development of the construction with a feed scaffolding. As head of the main design office, he was responsible for the successful competition designs and order processing for many large bridges.

In 1963 he did his doctorate at the Technical University of Karlsruhe with the dissertation The circularly curved beam loaded at right angles to its plane with rigid torsional restraint at the support points . In 1970 Wittfoht became the managing and personally liable partner of the construction company Polensky & Zöllner. He wrote over 40 publications on questions and problems of prestressed concrete bridge construction and had registered over 30 patents .

Honors

Hans Wittfoht has received many awards for his versatile, internationally recognized life's work. He was honored with the Freyssinet Medal of the Fédération Internationale de la Précontrainte and the Award of Merit in Structural Engineering of the International Association for Building Construction and Bridge Construction (IVBH) (1989). 1979 awarded him the University of Stuttgart , the honorary doctorate (as Dr.-Ing. Eh ).

plant

Bridge structures

With the help of Hans Wittfoht, the following bridge structures were built:

• 1960: Main bridge in Bettingen
• 1964: Krahnenberg Bridge
• 1969: Siegtal Bridge
• 1973: Köhlbrand Bridge
• 1974: Pfeddersheim Viaduct
• 1976: Volmetal Bridge
• 1978: Sallingsund Bridge
• 1980: Gutach Valley Bridge

Fonts

• Circularly curved beams with rigid torsional restraint at the support points. Theory and calculation. Springer-Verlag , Berlin 1964.
• Triumph of the spans. History of bridge building. Beton-Verlag, Düsseldorf 1972.
• Building bridges. History, Technology, Construction. Beton-Verlag, Düsseldorf 1984.

literature

• Klaus Stiglat : Civil engineers and their work. Ernst & Sohn , Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-433-01665-8 , p. 452.
• Hans Wittfoht: A passionate bridge builder. Pieces of the mosaic from the life of an entrepreneur. Verlag Bau + Technik, Düsseldorf 2005, ISBN 3-7640-0457-6 .
• Karl-Eugen Kurrer : History of Structural Analysis. In search of balance , 2., strong ad. Edition, Ernst & Sohn, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-433-03134-6 , p. 765 f and p. 1052 f (biography).

Web links

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