Hermann Billing

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Hermann Billing (around 1909)

Hermann Billing (born February 7, 1867 in Karlsruhe ; † March 2, 1946 there ) was a German architect, designer and university lecturer. He is considered an important representative of Art Nouveau in Karlsruhe and south-west Germany.

Life

Billing was the son of a building contractor from Karlsruhe. He went to high school but did not graduate from high school. He broke off the arts and crafts school and a degree in architecture prematurely. a. Pupil of Otto Warth . Thanks to the fortune of his wife, whom he had met during an architecture internship in Berlin around 1890, he was financially secure as a private architect in his hometown (from 1892). At that time, at the age of 25, he and his wife moved into an apartment at Friedenstrasse 14. At first, he could afford to work only on competition designs - so avant-garde and bold that he quickly became known nationwide as a “modern”. From the middle of the 1890s he received larger orders ( Melanchthonhaus facade in Bretten / Lorenz machine factory in Ettlingen / villas in Jahnstrasse / Hofapotheke). In 1899 he had a complete room set up at the German Art Exhibition in Dresden. He was very active and often changed office partners, from 1895 to 1903 Billing had already moved six times. There was practically a move into the house every year. It was the same with his family life. He was married three times and had a total of eight children, as well as an illegitimate son (* 1905), which was considered scandalous at the time. His first wife divorced him for this reason. He lived with his third wife on Leopoldsplatz at Leopoldstrasse 7c.

Farm pharmacy
Apartment block Hermann-Billing-Str., Oberpostdirektion
Kunsthalle in Mannheim
Baischstrasse No. 3 in Karlsruhe

Due to the good order situation, he was constantly hiring new employees and had branch offices in other cities. The “total work of art” Baischstrasse made him known throughout Germany. In his most famous projects, the Kunsthalle Baden-Baden and the Kunsthalle Mannheim , he represented a powerful, succinct Art Nouveau that was already transitioning to neoclassicism . Billing was not only an architect, but also a designer, university professor, appraiser and judge in countless architecture competitions as far as Russia and Finland.

Billing saw himself as a universal artist. He was close to the artist scene in Karlsruhe and in 1896 was the only architect to join the newly founded Karlsruhe Artists Association. This had formed as a secession and was particularly committed to the construction of an art gallery in Baden-Baden. Numerous paintings, drawings and etchings by Billing have survived. Architectural fantasies are at the center of his graphic works.

Hermann Billing, oil sketch, early 20th century.
Hermann Billing, architectural fantasy, etching, early 20th century.

Billing's artistic work remained - in this respect comparable to the Belgian artists Victor Horta and Henry van de Velde - essentially limited to the Art Nouveau period.

When he was a student, Billing was a member of the Academic Association "Cheruskia", which later became the Corps and finally merged with the Corps Friso-Cheruskia . The Hermann Billing Prize is donated annually by the Corps Friso-Cheruskia for outstanding diploma theses or dissertations at the University of Karlsruhe. From 1903 to 1937 Hermann Billing was a professor at the Technical University of Karlsruhe and at the Karlsruhe Art Academy . In the years from 1920 he limited himself largely to his work as a professor at the Academy (until 1923) or at the Technical University (until 1937). His work archive is partly in the Architecture Museum of the Technical University of Munich and in the Southwest German Archive for Architecture and Engineering .

Buildings and designs

Karlsruhe

Other locations

literature

  • Rudolf Wohlleben : Well-known Weinheimer Corps students (Hermann Billing), in: Wulf Thommel : 100 years of Weinheimer Verband Alter Corpsstudenten (WVAC eV) 1903–2003 . Weinheim 2003, pp. 59-60.
  • Gerhard Kabierske: The architect Hermann Billing (1867–1946). Life and work. (= Materials on building research and building history, 7.) Karlsruhe 1996, ISSN  0940-578X .
  • Gerhard Kabierske: Hermann Billing. Architect between historicism, art nouveau and new building. In: Notes from the Southwest German Archive for Architecture and Civil Engineering at the University of Karlsruhe. No. 3, January 1998 ( PDF; 1.2 MB ).
  • Erika Rödiger-Diruf et al .: Hermann Billing. Architect between historicism, art nouveau and new building. Exhibition catalog Städtische Galerie Karlsruhe 1997, ISBN 3-923344-38-4 .
  • Friedemann Schäfer: City walks in Karlsruhe. Art Nouveau. Karlsruhe 2007, ISBN 978-3-7650-8360-0 .

Web links

Commons : Hermann Billing  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Werner Wolf-Holzäpfel: The architect Max Meckel 1847-1910. Studies on the architecture and church building of historicism in Germany . Josef Fink, Lindenberg 2000, ISBN 3-933784-62-X , p. 379 .
  2. ↑ Kabierske, p. 212 f.
  3. ↑ Max Schmid (ed.): One hundred designs from the competition for the Bismarck National Monument on the Elisenhöhe near Bingerbrück-Bingen. Düsseldorfer Verlagsanstalt, Düsseldorf 1911. (n. Pag.)
personal data
SURNAME Billing, Hermann
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German architect, designer and university professor
DATE OF BIRTH February 7, 1867
PLACE OF BIRTH Karlsruhe
DATE OF DEATH March 2, 1946
Place of death Karlsruhe