Hermann Geissler (architect)

Robert Hermann Geissler (born October 25, 1859 in Olbersdorf ; † January 7, 1939 in Hamburg ) was a German architect .

Live and act

Hermann Geissler was born near Zittau in Upper Lusatia . He attended a rural and secondary school, did an apprenticeship as a bricklayer, carpenter and stonemason and studied at the construction school. In 1878 he went to Hamburg and participated in the development of the new Colonnaden . Then he worked for the post office and the Zittau-Reichenau railway .

In November 1885 Geissler returned to Hamburg, where he took part in the construction of the Hamburg City Hall . The remains of the previous town hall on the Trostbrücke had been blown up after the great fire of 1842 , a new building had not yet started after two unsuccessful competitions in 1854 and 1876. The architect Martin Haller has been leading a group of architects since 1880 who designed a new building as the Town Hall Builders Association. Geissler joined this consortium as a younger generation architect. After the completion of the new town hall, Haller accepted Geissler into his partnership. Haller, who had completed a university degree, remained a creative leader, Geissler, who had learned the profession practically, mostly took on the construction work and organizational tasks.

The two architects built numerous private houses, bank buildings and office buildings up until the First World War in an era of booming construction. The firm received orders mostly because of Haller's good reputation. During this time, the Africa House, the Belvedere House (1903/04) and the Sloman House were built . These buildings are modern skeleton constructions that do not have any decorative decoration. The architects designed the bank buildings, however, according to the representational wishes of their clients: the buildings of the Dresdner Bank on Jungfernstieg (1898/99), the Hamburger Vereinsbank (1900–1902) or the Bankhaus Warburg are traditional and in the neo-Renaissance style.

Grave of Hermann Geißler , Ohlsdorf cemetery

Geissler also worked as a consulting architect for the Protestant church from 1905. Together with Julius Faulwasser and Emil Meerwein , he planned the reconstruction of the main church of Sankt Michaelis, which had been destroyed by fire . Haller retired at the end of 1914. Geissler then continued to work independently. In the years after the First World War, he mostly converted existing buildings of his regular customers or extended existing structures. He also benefited from his contacts with the Protestant Church, whose orders he worked on from 1926 in a new partnership with Otto Wilkening . The Ansgar Church in Hamburg-Langenhorn dates from this time and is one of the structures that helped Geissler gain its own reputation.

Geissler ended his activities as an architect in the early 1930s. He died in Hamburg in early 1939. Ten years earlier, the Hamburg Senate had named the Geisslertwiete in the Jarrestadt after the architect who shaped Hamburg's inner city.

In the Ohlsdorf cemetery in Hamburg there is a gravestone for Hermann Geißler at grid square O 11 (on Cordesallee near Cordesbrunnen ) .

literature

• Jan Lubitz: Geissler, Hermann . In: Franklin Kopitzsch, Dirk Brietzke (Hrsg.): Hamburgische Biographie . tape 5 . Wallstein, Göttingen 2010, ISBN 978-3-8353-0640-0 , p. 127-128 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Celebrity Graves