Hermann Henselmann

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Hermann Henselmann, 1952

Hermann Henselmann (born February 3, 1905 in Roßla ; † January 19, 1995 in Berlin ) was a German architect . His work shaped architecture and urban planning in the GDR in the 1950s and 1960s. He was u. a. Chief architect of the East Berlin magistrate .

Henselmann is particularly known for his socialist-classicist buildings from the 1950s based on the “ 16 principles of urban development ” (including Frankfurter Tor / Strausberger Platz Berlin), as well as for his modernist city high-rises in Leipzig and Jena and the design idea for the Berlin television tower .

Life

Hermann Henselmann as chief architect in East Berlin (left in the picture) together with Kurt Liebknecht (right), the president of the German Building Academy (DBA), and Edmund Collein , the vice-president of the academy (center), at the second public general assembly in May 1954 the DBA
Memorial plaque on the house at Marchlewskistraße 25a, in Berlin-Friedrichshain

After completing an apprenticeship as a carpenter, Hermann Henselmann studied at the Berlin School of Crafts and Applied Arts , where he learned to draw, model and design. From 1926 to 1930 he worked for Arnold Bruhn in Kiel and Leo Nachtlicht in Berlin. In 1930 he built with his friend, the Hungarian set designer Alexander Ferenczy , the villa Ken-win in the Swiss Montreux for the English couple Kenneth McPherson and Anni Winnifred Ellerman ( Bryher ) in radically modern form following his example Le Corbusier . He then went into business for himself as an architect. He planned and realized numerous residential buildings in Berlin and the surrounding area. With Haus vom Hoff , built in Kleinmachnow in 1934 , Henselmann got into a dispute with the National Socialist regime and consequently did not join the Reich Chamber of Culture of the Fine Arts . Henselmann had to give up his self-employment and worked until 1939 as an employed architect in the office of Carl Brodführer and Werner Issel , which specializes in industrial construction , from 1939 as an employee for the reconstruction of war-torn farms in the Wartheland and as the office manager of Godber Nissen .

After the end of the war , Henselmann first became a city ​​planner in Gotha , then in 1946 director at the University of Architecture and Fine Arts in Weimar and in 1949 department head at the Institute for Construction of the German Academy of Sciences , Berlin (GDR). He took over the master workshop I and was asked, together with the master workshops II, Hanns Hopp , and III, Richard Paulick , to develop proposals for the redevelopment of the Stalinallee . Although the “modernist architecture concept” of his design for the skyscraper on Weberwiese had been politically questioned, he was nevertheless awarded the contract and built the house in the style of socialist realism, as did the subsequent development on Strausberger Platz . With his wife and eight children, he moved into an apartment on the 6th floor on Strausberger Platz, in the child's house . The Frankfurter Tor , where Henselmann used precast concrete parts, led to the most extensive industrialization of construction. On the occasion of his visit to Berlin in the mid-1950s, Oscar Niemeyer described the East-West Magistrale in [East Berlin] as “one of the most important avenues in European metropolises ”. Aldo Rossi presented the traffic axis as a legitimate model of postmodern architecture during the Milan Triennale [1973] . In this context, Thilo Hilpert also referred to the city ​​center of Villeurbanne (1927–1931) designed by Môrice Leroux .

Due to his achievements in the Stalinallee project, Henselmann worked from 1953 to 1959 as chief architect for the city council of Greater Berlin. Then, until 1964, he was chief architect of the Institute for Special Buildings at the Bauakademie in various design brigades. Until 1967, Henselmann headed the Institute for Type Project Planning (VEB) for industrial building and from 1967 until his retirement in 1972 the Institute for Urban Development and Architecture at the Bauakademie.

After German reunification , the various building institutes in the GDR were wound up, and in 1991 Henselmann offered the German Architecture Museum in Frankfurt am Main to take over his estate. But the museum, represented by its then director Vittorio Magnago Lampugnani , declined. So Hermann Henselmann finally left all of his working documents to the archive of the Akademie der Künste Berlin . The written estate is kept in the Saxon State Library - Dresden State and University Library .

Familiar

Honorary grave at the forest cemetery in Zehlendorf (2016)

Hermann Henselmann is the grandfather of actress Anne-Sophie Briest .

He is buried in the forest cemetery in Zehlendorf . His grave is dedicated to the city of Berlin as an honorary grave .

Hermann Henselmann Foundation

On the 100th birthday of Hermann Henselmann in 2005, his son Andreas Henselmann founded the Hermann Henselmann Foundation . It is devoted to questions of architecture and urban planning under social, aesthetic and socio-political aspects.

Perception in art

In his song Eight Arguments for Keeping the Name Stalinallee for Stalinallee 1972, Wolf Biermann alludes to the changeable assessment of Henselmann by the government of the GDR: “And Henselmann got Haue / So that he could build the street / And because he then built it / He was beaten up again. "

Buildings (selection)

The teacher's house , some residential buildings along what was then Stalinallee, the domed building of the congress hall on Alexanderplatz and the Leipzig city high-rise are considered to be Henselmann's main works .

- sorted by year of inauguration -

Awards

Publications (selection)

  • A wealth of new tasks . In: Fine arts. Magazine for painting, graphics, sculpture and architecture. Berlin. 3rd year issue 1/1949, p. 9ff.
  • Travel to the known and the unknown. Edited by Margot Pfannstiel , Verlag für die Frau , Leipzig 1969.
  • with Irene Henselmann: The big book on building , children's book publisher, Berlin 1976.
  • Three trips to Berlin, the résumé and lifestyle of a German architect in the last century of the second millennium. Henschel, Berlin 1981.
  • Draw from the sky to the drawing board. Architect in socialism. Selected articles 1936 to 1981 , edited by Marie-Josée Seipelt et al. Verlag der Beeken, Berlin 1982, ISBN 3-922993-01-X .
  • I made suggestions , ed. by Wolfgang Schächen , Ernst and Son, Berlin 1995, ISBN 3-433-02872-9 (collection of articles).

literature

Radio reports / films

Web links

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

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Thilo Hilpert: Hermann Henselmann, The architect of the Stalinallee . In: Century of Modernity . Springer Vieweg, Wiesbaden 2015, ISBN 978-3-658-07042-7 , pp. 229 .
  2. ^ Jan Lubitz: Hermann Henselmann, 1905-1995. February 2002, accessed April 16, 2019 .
  3. ↑ a b c see portrait of the architect
  4. ↑ This renovation is a break in style . In: The world ; Interview with Irene Henselmann.
  5. ↑ Maritta Adam-Tkalec: City History When Strausberger Platz 19 was still a paradise for children. Berliner Zeitung, January 9, 2017, accessed on April 29, 2019 .
  6. ^ Thilo Hilpert: Hermann Henselmann, the architect of the Stalinallee . In: Century of Modernity . Springer Vieweg, Wiesbaden 2015, ISBN 978-3-658-07042-7 , pp. 228 and 231 .
  7. ^ Jean-Francois Loiseau: Le quartier des Gratte-ciel (Villeurbanne 1931-1934) - Morice Leroux - Utopies réalisées (episode 2). youtube, August 4, 2013, accessed on April 27, 2019 (French).
  8. ^ Thilo Hilpert: Hermann Henselmann, the architect of the Stalinallee . In: Century of Modernity . Springer Vieweg, Wiesbaden 2015, ISBN 978-3-658-07042-7 , pp. 228 .
  9. ^ The Federal Archives: Henselmann, Hermann (1905–1995). Retrieved April 27, 2019 .
  10. ^ Hermann Henselmann Foundation
  11. ↑ Wolf Biermann : For my comrades . Hetzlieder, poems, ballads (=  quart booklets . No. 62 ). Klaus Wagenbach, Berlin 1972, ISBN 3-8031-0062-3 , p. 41 . Also on the record, don't wait for better times from 1972.
  12. ↑ Villa Kenwin on veronique-goel.net
  13. ^ Niels Gutschow : Ordnungswahn: Architects plan in the "Germanized East" 1939–1945. Birkhäuser, Basel 2001, p. 35 f.
  14. ↑ Karin Bühner: Life under the bell jar of a political monument. In the new farmer settlement Großfurra-Neuheide one is looking for ways into the future . In: Thüringische Landeszeitung . August 9, 1990.
  15. ^ Joachim Schulz, Werner Graebner: Berlin. Capital of the DDR. Architecture guide GDR. VEB Verlag für Bauwesen, Berlin 1974; Object numbers 141, p. 96.
personal data
SURNAME Henselmann, Hermann
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German architect, MdV, MdL
DATE OF BIRTH February 3, 1905
PLACE OF BIRTH Rossla
DATE OF DEATH January 19, 1995
Place of death Berlin