Heinrich Eggerstedt

Heinrich Eggerstedt (born May 9, 1904 in Pinneberg ; † May 3, 1945 in Berlin ) was a German architect .

Life

Heinrich Eggerstedt first completed a three-year apprenticeship as a carpenter and then studied from 1923 to 1925 at the building trade school in Hamburg. As Karl Schneider's buildings impressed him, he applied for a job in Schneider's office in 1923, but did not get a job until 1925 due to the poor order situation. During his studies Eggerstedt worked as a construction joiner.

When Karl Schneider put together a group of young architects in the mid-1920s who were supposed to implement the architect's avant-garde ambitions, he also selected Eggerstedt. In 1925/26 the architectural office took part in ten competitions, seven of which it won, including a tender for the design of the Jarrestadt . In the period that followed, the architects' office received numerous private and state commissions, and Eggerstedt helped to plan and implement them.

In 1927 Eggerstedt became a member of the Altona Artists' Association on the recommendation of Edgar Ende and Carl Blohm , with whom he was friends . In 1927/28 Eggerstedt and Blohm traveled to Paris , crossed Spain and returned to Hamburg. In autumn 1928 Eggerstedt, Albert Clauss and Sergius Ruegenberg , who all worked in Karl Schneider's office, took part in a competition to design a hospital in Pinneberg . They did this without Schneider's knowledge and thus entered into competition with his official, also submitted draft. When the plans of the three architects were rated better than Schneider's plans, Schneider, who felt cheated, fired the three employees.

In 1929 Karl Schneider hired Heinrich Eggerstedt again, but dismissed him a year later due to austerity measures he was forced to take. Eggerstedt moved to the Soviet Union in 1931 with his wife Ella, née Sievers, later Ruegenberg, on the advice of Ernst May . May worked here with a group of 20 architects in Moscow on urban planning projects. Together with Werner Hebebrand , Eggerstedt planned and implemented large hospitals in Magnitogorsk and Novosibirsk . In 1932 Eggerstedt returned to Hamburg. The reason for this was the difficult living conditions in Siberia , due to which the architect fell ill. Until 1935 Eggerstedt redesigned the sales rooms of the goldsmith Josef Arnold, which were located at the Große Bleichen , but had almost no orders during the rest of the time.

Walter Kratz , whom Eggerstedt knew from his time in the Soviet Union, arranged for Eggerstedt several orders from the German Labor Front (DAF) in Berlin in the mid-1930s . In 1938 Eggerstedt became deputy director of the DAF architecture office. Due to his experience with the New Building, architects like Eggerstedt were asked by the National Socialists, even if the collaboration required a willingness to compromise between modern and traditional building forms.

Albert Speer commissioned Eggerstedt in 1941 to plan a "City X". As part of the project, a residential town for 16,000 people was to be built near the Peenemünde Army Research Center . In his planning, Eggerstedt was able to draw on experience that he had gained during his stay in the Soviet Union. Several prototypes of the system were published when planning new cities in the eastern part of the German Reich . Eggerstedt took part in construction projects and competitions across Germany. In 1941 he submitted ideas for the design of Ost-West-Straße , with which he won the 2nd competition prize. On behalf of Konstanty Gutschow , Eggerstedt drew up plans for the Admiralty's service building as part of a modified design of the Hamburg Elbe bank in the same year. Gutschow also planned to employ Eggerstedt as a teacher at the planned, but never established Academy for Architecture and Sculpture.

Heinrich Eggerstedt died shortly before the end of the Second World War while trying to leave Berlin , which was occupied by Soviet troops . He was no longer able to implement plans drawn up beforehand for the conversion of his family's residence in Glückstadt .

literature

• Susanne Geese: Eggerstedt, Heinrich . In: Franklin Kopitzsch, Dirk Brietzke (Hrsg.): Hamburgische Biographie . tape 3 . Wallstein, Göttingen 2006, ISBN 3-8353-0081-4 , p. 105-107 .