Heinrich Schmutz

Heinrich Schmütze (* in Switzerland; † 1704 ) was a Prussian engineer- captain who mainly designed military and civil buildings for Magdeburg .

Life

After Magdeburg finally came under the rule of Brandenburg in 1680 , the new governor of Magdeburg, Prince Leopold von Anhalt-Dessau (the "Old Dessau"), in 1679 commissioned the chief engineer Heinrich Schmütze to plan and build the great Magdeburg citadel on the Elbe island of Werder . According to Schmutzes plan, casemates covered with earth were built behind eight-meter-high walls , which were to serve as accommodation for the soldiers and as space for war equipment and provisions . The casemates were built with brick vaults. In the spacious citadel, a large flour store, weapons arsenals and two parade grounds were set up. The citadel took 20 years to build, and it was put into operation in 1702. For a long time it was considered the strongest fortress in Prussia and impregnable.

Magdeburg's town hall, which was destroyed in the Thirty Years' War , was rebuilt from 1691 to 1698 according to plans by Schmütze and under his direction . Schmütze designed a palatial two-storey building in the style of contemporary Brandenburg castle architecture using elements from the Italian-Dutch Renaissance , using sandstone for the representative market facade. The first supraregional baroque building was built in Magdeburg.

For the German Reformed Congregation, Schmütze, who belonged to the congregation, provided the blueprint for the Peter and Paul Church, which was built between 1698 and 1700 on Magdeburger Breiten Weg. In accordance with the Reformed Confession, the interior was deliberately designed to be simple, only two round-arched baroque portals, which were let into the facade facing the Breite Weg and which were obviously based on designs by dirt, were decorative elements. The church was demolished again in 1895 because it had to give way to the new building of the Magdeburg Post Office. The two portals that are now built into the facades of the Protestant consistory at the cathedral and in the Roncallihaus on Max-Josef-Metzger-Strasse have been preserved.

The St. George Church in the Bördedorf Langenweddingen proves that Heinrich Schmütze was also active outside of Magdeburg and for smaller construction projects . According to his design, a single-nave, cross-shaped building with baroque elements was built in 1703, which integrated the tower of the late Romanesque predecessor church, which was also decorated with baroque portals.

literature

• Ute Bednarz, Folkhard Cremer et al. (Editing): Dehio-Handbuch der Deutschen Kunstdenkmäler, Saxony-Anhalt I, administrative district Magdeburg. Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich / Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-422-03069-7 .
• Peter Petsch, Matthias Puhle: Magdeburg. The history of the city 805–2005. Verlag Janos Stekovics , Dößel 2005, ISBN 3-89923-105-8 .