Herbert Hirche

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Herbert Hirche (born May 20, 1910 in Görlitz ; † January 28, 2002 in Heidelberg ) was a German architect , interior designer , furniture and product designer and university professor and rector .

Life

After an apprenticeship as a carpenter and traveling from 1924 to 1929, Herbert Hirche studied at the Bauhaus in Dessau and Berlin from 1930 to 1933 . Among his teachers were Wassily Kandinsky and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe , with whom he worked from 1934 to 1938 in his office in Berlin.

From 1939 to 1945 Hirche worked for Egon Eiermann , after 1945 for Hans Scharoun . From 1945 to 1948 he was the main consultant at the planning office for the reconstruction of the city of Berlin. In 1948 he was appointed professor of applied arts at the University of Applied Arts in Berlin-Weißensee , which he resigned in 1950 because of the “formalism debate” for the construction of Stalinallee . Hirche had been a member of the Deutscher Werkbund since 1950 and of the Association of German Industrial Designers since 1959 , of which he was President from 1960 to 1970 and who subsequently “recognized his services, his commitment to the profession and the professional profile of industrial designers in Germany Honorary President with an advisory vote ”. From 1951 to 1952 he designed the establishment of a college for design as an employee of the building construction authority in Mannheim; He also prepared the competition for the Mannheim National Theater, in which his teacher Ludwig Mies van der Rohe also took part on his initiative. In 1952, he succeeded the late architect and interior designer Karl Wiehl (at the same time as Herta-Maria Witzemann ) and was appointed professor for interior design and furniture construction at the State Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart , which he held until 1975. For two years, from 1969 to 1971, he was rector of the academy. He has also been a member of the German Design Council since 1961. Liberal convictions, open to modern art movements, rector in a difficult time in terms of university politics, in 1977 the Stuttgart Academy awarded him honorary membership. In his laudation, the then rector, Wolfgang Kermer , described him as the "last Bauhaus member of the Weissenhof".

plant

Music cabinet Braun HM 6-81, 1958
Braun HF 1 television set, 1958

He has always worked as a freelance architect, designer and exhibition designer. Herbert Hirche had a great influence on the development of product and interior design in Germany after the Second World War , where he introduced the ideas and style of the Bauhaus teaching. He designed furniture and sophisticated industrial products.

"If something is natural and beautiful, then it is good design."

When the Braun company began to position itself as a design-oriented company, it commissioned Herbert Hirche as well as Hans Gugelot . The developed design attitude was later continued by Dieter Rams . Music cabinets by Braun, designed by Herbert Hirche, belonged in every modern villa in the late 1950s, and many architects recommended these devices to equip their buildings.

Hirche's work has also been shown at national and international trade fairs and exhibitions. These include the Milan Triennale in 1957 and the World Exhibition in Brussels in 1958. In 1964, examples of his work were shown at the documenta III in Kassel in the Industrial Design department .

Both his architecture and the furniture and industrial products designed by him were characterized by functionality and harmonious proportions based on mostly cubic basic shapes. He developed detachable home and office furniture systems that could be assembled by the buyers themselves.

His estate is kept in the Werkbundarchiv - Museum der Dinge Berlin.

Literature and Sources

  • State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart: for the 200th anniversary of the academy: The teachers 1946-1961 . Stuttgart: State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart, 1961, pp. 78–81.
  • documenta III. International exhibition ; Catalog: Volume 1: Painting and Sculpture; Volume 2: Hand Drawings; Volume 3: Industrial Design, Graphics; Kassel / Cologne 1964.
  • herbert hirche. architecture interior design 1945-1978 , Stuttgart 1978 - catalog for the exhibitions in the Landesgewerbeamt Stuttgart 16 February - 30 March 1978, bauhaus archiv berlin 13 April - 14 May 1978, Haus Industrieform Essen 23 June - 22 July 1978, Institute for New Technical Form Darmstadt October 20 - November 26, 1978 [enclosed leaflet with texts by Jürgen Hildebrandt, Wolfgang Kermer and Max Bill ].
  • Kasiske, Michael: Radiant gray. Herbert Hirche retrospective in the Werkbund archive . In: Bauwelt, issue 28.10, year 101, July 23, 2010, p. 5.
  • Kermer, Wolfgang: Birthdays [For Herbert Hirche's 65th birthday on May 20, 1975] . In: Akademie-Mitteilungen 7: Staatliche Akademie der bildenden Künste Stuttgart: for the period from April 1, 1975 to May 31, 1976. Edited by Wolfgang Kermer, Stuttgart: State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart, August 1976, p. 38.
  • Kermer, Wolfgang: Human design as a life's work: the architect and designer Herbert Hirche on his 75th birthday . In: Stuttgarter Nachrichten, No. 115, May 20, 1985.
  • Kimpel, Harald / Stengel, Karin: documenta III 1964 - International Exhibition - A Photographic Reconstruction (series of the documenta archive), Bremen 2005, ISBN 978-3-86108-528-7 .
  • Marquart, Christian: Industrial culture - industrial design. A piece of German economic and design history. The founders of the Association of German Industrial Designers , Berlin [approx. 1993], pp. 105-135.
  • Niedenthal, Clemens: No ingratiation to the consumer , In: die tageszeitung, No. 9252, July 30, 2010, p. 28.
  • Heide Rezepa-Zabel : Herbert Hirche . In: Collectors Journal. Art, antiques, auctions, issue 8/2010, pp. 32–39.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Akademie-Mitteilungen 3: State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart: for the period from October 1, 1972 to March 31, 1973. Ed. By Wolfgang Kermer, Stuttgart: State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart, April 1973, p. 7.
  2. ↑ Wolfgang Kermer: Data and images on the history of the State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart . Stuttgart: Edition Cantz, 1988 (= improved reprint from: The State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart: a self-portrayal . Stuttgart: Edition Cantz, 1988) o. P. [12], with ill.
  3. ↑ Herbert Hirche, quoted in: nmz - Neue Musik Zeitung KIZ - German Cultural Council www.nmz.de from January 30, 2002.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Hirche, Herbert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German architect and industrial designer
DATE OF BIRTH May 20, 1910
PLACE OF BIRTH Goerlitz
DATE OF DEATH January 28, 2002
Place of death Heidelberg