Herman Sörgel

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Herman Sörgel

Herman Sörgel (born April 2, 1885 in Regensburg , † December 25, 1952 in Munich ) was a German expressionist architect ( Bauhaus ) and cultural philosopher who dealt with spatial theory and geopolitical issues.

Life

Herman Sörgel came from a technically gifted family. His father was a pioneer in the field of building water-powered electric power plants in Bavaria.

Herman Sörgel became known through a monumental dam project " Atlantropa " for the Strait of Gibraltar , which he worked on from 1928 and presented in a book with the same title in 1932. Sörgel took the geopolitically supported view that three economic power blocs would form in the future: America, Europe and Asia. Due to its backwardness in civilization, Africa will be technologically decoupled and only be of importance as a supplier of raw materials - unless Europe enters into sustainable ties with Africa. He also recognized that coal and oil would become more and more expensive in the foreseeable future due to the scarcity of fossil resources. As a possible way out, he advocated utilizing the huge energy potential of hydropower in the Mediterranean by means of a dam . Valuable new land was to be gained through the partial drainage of the Mediterranean . The laborious detailed work carried out by the Dutch on the North Sea over generations should now be repeated on a large scale in the Mediterranean area; in the final stage, the new continent "Atlantropa" should emerge from Europe and Africa . Sörgel was a staunch pacifist who wanted to bundle the creative power of the European peoples in the colonizing mega-project "Atlantropa". The failed political goal of Napoleon I to weld the European nations together into a war-free European Union through large-scale pan-European colonization projects - especially in Eastern Europe - was to become a reality through "Atlantropa".

Herman Sörgel worked as a government architect and probably lived in the Munich area for his entire life. He died on Christmas 1952 as a result of an unexplained traffic accident in which he was hit by a car on his bicycle on the way to a lecture in Munich's Prinzregentenstrasse.

After his death, the “Atlantropa” project was not pursued any further and was shelved due to the potential dangers and foreseeable negative consequences. Subsequent geopolitical work by Sörgel (Congo / Lake Chad project as an addition to Atlantropa) is considered lost. Parts of the archives of the Atlantropa Institute he founded and closed in 1960 are kept in the Deutsches Museum (see web links).

Publications

  • Introduction to architectural aesthetics. Prolegomena to a theory of architecture , 1918
  • Theory of Architecture I. Architecture-Aesthetics , 3rd edition, Piloty & Löhle, Munich 1921 (Reprint: Gebr. Mann, Berlin 1998, ISBN 3-7861-1992-9 )
  • Draft for the educational reform of the grammar school , Jenaer Volksbuchhandlung, Jena 1921
  • Draft reform for the uniform organization of building schools , 1921
  • The Chilehaus , Hamburg. Architect Fr. Höger (= Germany's industry and trade; 1), Raue, Charlottenburg 1924
  • Residential houses (= Handbook of Architecture, Part IV, Half Volume 2, Book 1), 2nd edition, 1927
  • Errors and oddities in building and living , Gebhardt, Leipzig 1929
  • Mediterranean lowering, Saharan irrigation - (Panropa project) - Lowering the Mediterranean, Irrigating the Sahara , multilingual edition, Gebhardt, Leipzig 1929
  • The house for the weekend , Gebhardt, Leipzig 1930
  • Atlantropa. Fretz & Wasmuth, Zurich / Piloty & Loehle, Munich 1932
  • Foreword to: Wayne W. Parrish: Technocracy - the new doctrine of salvation , Piper, Munich 1933
  • The three big A, America, Atlantropa, Asia , 1938
  • Atlantropa ABC. Strength, space, bread. Explanations of the Atlantropa project , Arnd, Leipzig 1942
  • Atlantropa. Characteristics of a project (= Atlantropa library; volume 1), foreword by John Knittel , Behrendt, Stuttgart 1948

literature

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Sörgel, Herman
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German architect
DATE OF BIRTH April 2, 1885
PLACE OF BIRTH regensburg
DATE OF DEATH December 25, 1952
Place of death Munich