Hubert Gross

Hubert Groß (born April 15, 1896 in Edenkoben ; † February 5, 1992 in Augsburg ) was a German architect and construction clerk , city planner in Würzburg and urban planner in occupied Warsaw in 1939/1940 .

Life

Youth and Studies

Groß was born the son of a carpenter . He attended the Progymnasium in his place of birth and the humanistic grammar school in Neustadt an der Weinstrasse . After passing the school leaving examination, he was drafted at the beginning of the First World War and deployed on the Romanian front. In Grafenwoehr he completed an officer course from December 1916 to April 1917 and then returned to the Romanian front. Wounded by a grazing shot, Groß was given leave to return to his hometown in September 1917. After returning to the Eastern Front , his unit was transferred to the Western Front in Guignicourt near Reims in May 1918 . A second injury on June 2, 1918 from a gunshot wound to his knee forced Groß to stay in Ingolstadt for two months . From Bamberg he returned to the Western Front in the second half of October 1918, only to see the end of the war in Oudenaade in November 1918. Via Bamberg and a quarantine in Griesheim , Groß got back to his hometown Edenkoben in the spring of 1919.

His original career aspiration to be accepted as an active officer in the Reichswehr was thwarted by the outcome of the war. Groß was not very enthusiastic about his parents' request to study theology . The meeting with his old classmate Wilhelm Schulte II on the occasion of a festive commander in August 1919 was the decisive factor for him to study architecture . The post-war conditions in the Palatinate, which was occupied by France, prompted him to begin his studies in Munich in autumn 1919 . In line with his conservative-national attitude, he resisted separatist currents in his French-occupied homeland by sticking patriotic poems in Neustadt an der Weinstrasse.

Groß finished his architecture studies in Munich, which he began in autumn 1919, with the main diploma examination in spring 1923. His teachers included such well-known architects as Friedrich Thiersch , German Bestelmeyer and Theodor Fischer . As a student he also became a member of the southern German Catholic student union "Alemania Munich".

Upper Post Office Speyer

After his marriage on April 28, 1923, Groß returned to the Palatinate and on June 1, 1923 began an employment as a construction referendar at the Oberpostdirektion Speyer , which appointed him to the post construction management in Landau in the Palatinate . Due to the ongoing French occupation of the Palatinate, the headquarters of the Oberpostdirektion was in Würzburg, Main Franconia . The maintenance of an administrative building was what tied Groß until 1925 in Landau. He then moved to Speyer, where he was taken on as a salaried employee after passing the state examination and was soon appointed deputy head of department. Already at that time, in addition to taking care of post offices, he was also working part-time with his friend and federal brother Wilhelm Schulte II in the construction of churches and civil servants' apartments in Pirmasens .

Wurzburg

After an unsuccessful application for the position of a town planning officer in Homburg an der Saar, Groß was hired on February 15, 1931, initially as an employee of the building construction department of the city of Würzburg. A takeover as a civil servant, as sought by Groß, was initially only promised. At the same time, Rudolf Schlick , who had been a trainee lawyer at Groß in Speyer, became the new head of the Würzburg city planning office.

In 1932 Groß, who was previously a member of the Center Party , joined the Bavarian People's Party and in January 1933 was taken over by the city of Würzburg as head of the building construction department. However, he did not see his skills and official duties as satisfactory. This only changed when the National Socialists came to power in 1933 and the increased number of tasks triggered in Würzburg through the creation of numerous new urban buildings. Groß showed himself to be receptive to the economic awakening in Germany brought about by the new political rulers, which he also saw as useful for his career, even if he could not show any enthusiasm for the National Socialist ideology. However, he saw the tangible advantages of adapting to the new political direction, whose totalitarian self-image was only known to supporters and opponents. So he joined the NSDAP on May 1, 1933 and became a member of the " Stahlhelm ". When he was transferred to the SA in May 1934 , he was an SA man; At the same time he was district propaganda warden of the National Socialist Association of German Technicians from 1933 , head of the homesteads in the district administration of the German Labor Front from 1934 , since 1936 state settler in the regional association of the Reichsbund der Kinderreich and honorary managing director of the non-profit construction company for small apartments. However, Groß left the SA on August 1, 1936. When Austria was annexed, Groß was called up to a road construction battalion of the Wehrmacht .

On January 1, 1939, the mayor of Würzburg, Theo Memmel , ordered a change in the management of the urban planning office and the building construction office, so that Groß took over the office for urban planning and urban expansion and his colleague Schlick took over the building construction office. In this position, Groß grew up with the creation of an economic plan required by the government of Main Franconia, which he said was the biggest and most important task of his life. Although he lacked the theoretical and practical experience for this, he saw the new task as a challenge, which became even more attractive when he learned in March 1939 that Würzburg had been subject to the "decree of the Führer and Reich Chancellor on urban planning measures in the city of Würzburg" of February 17, 1939 (RGBl. I, p. 265) was declared a city of redesign within the meaning of the “ Führer's Decree ” of October 4, 1937 (RGBl. I, p. 1054) and the Main Franconian Gauleiter received the order, which was laid down in the decree of 4 October 1937 to carry out the measures mentioned On his own initiative, Groß designed four variants for the redesign of the Gau capital Würzburg with his colleagues Hans skull , Karl Schmaderer and Otto Nürnberger , who was responsible in the civil engineering department for the construction of the new port in Zell. As early as April 11, 1939, Groß was able to present a plaster model on a scale of 1: 250, which a Munich specialist workshop had made, together with the first construction proposal with the designation "0". Completed by three other variants, Groß presented them to the mayor and Gauleiter of Mainfranken Otto Hellmuth at the beginning of May 1939 . As early as May 13, 1939, the Gauleiter succeeded in presenting the models to the General Building Inspector for the Reich capital Berlin and Nazi architect Albert Speer , during his visit to Würzburg and having them assessed. Groß's work met with a positive response from Adolf Hitler's favorite architects, so that he had the plans and models taken to the Berghof to show them to Hitler and about 50 guests on June 20, 1939.

Groß was able to personally present his plans there together with the Mayor of Würzburg Memmel and Gauleiter Hellmuth and answer questions. Hitler expressed his approval and, strangely enough, decided to further develop the variant, which provided for an asymmetrical arrangement of the building blocks. On August 15, 1939, Lord Mayor Memmel reported to the Würzburg City Council of the result of the plan presentation and examination at the highest level:

He himself and the building officer Groß were present at the meeting on Obersalzberg. In detail, the guide inspected the drafts and sketches that had been made by building officer Groß and his employees, Skull, Schmaderer and Nürnberger. In principle, the Führer was in agreement with the construction projects and a. Würzburg called the “jewel among the cities” and “incredibly beautiful city”. The responsible municipal authorities must therefore be aware of the size of their task. The city administration received the honorable order from Reich Inspector Speer to complete all the preliminary projects, which are otherwise only assigned to very specific architects. This work would be finished in about half a year. Then the permission of the Führer for the final reconstruction of the city, which should probably take 10 years, can be obtained.

However, further processing had to be postponed soon afterwards, since the economic plan was first priority and Groß was drafted to Ingelfingen for an exercise on August 20, 1939 as leader of the 3rd Company of Road Construction Battalion 571 . On September 1, 1939, when the attack on Poland began , the unit was ordered from Groß to Windenau in Upper Silesia to build a stick dam in the Rosenberg district. In October, Groß completed a "training course for (the) field service" in Oberhausen - Sterkrade .

Warsaw

So-called Pabst plan, made by Hubert Groß and other Würzburg city planners

After the attack on Poland and the military administration on October 25, 1939 and the establishment of a German civil occupation administration, the city treasurer of Würzburg, Oskar Rudolf Dengel , was appointed mayor of Warsaw on November 4, 1939 . For the planned redesign of Warsaw into a “German city”, Dengel brought Groß and about 20 other employees from the city of Würzburg to Warsaw in the second half of December 1939 and commissioned them with a design for “dismantling the Polish city” and converting it into a “new one German City of Warsaw ”. In addition, Dengel's staff had to oversee the municipal offices of Warsaw.

In his memoirs, Groß put it: "It was about developing a planning concept as to how and where the city structure with extensive buildings for the party and the state can be stamped with a German city."

Dengel appointed Groß on January 15, 1940 as head of department VII for building construction, urban development and the building police, and Erwin Suppinger , head of the Würzburg civil engineering office, as head of department VIII for civil engineering, road clearance, street maintenance, sewerage, bridges, street cleaning, vehicle fleets and supplies .

The joint efforts of the Würzburg planning staff resulted in a project documentation entitled: “Warsaw, the new German city”, the cover sheet of which was labeled: “This work was carried out by urban planners from Würzburg, whose Würzburg city plan was recognized by the Führer on June 20, 1939 has found. I thank my co-workers for the work and I am placing the same in the hands of the Governor General of the Occupied Polish Territories Reich Minister Pg. Frank. Warsaw, February 6, 1940. Mayor Dr. Dengel ".

This plan, incorrectly known as the " Pabst-Plan " (after the successor of Groß in Warsaw Friedrich Pabst) and exhibited in the Warsaw City Museum , consists of 15 panels in a bound 59 × 75 cm portfolio with drawings of the railways and roads network, the war destruction, the planned dismantling of the existing buildings and the presentation of the new construction phases for the future German population as well as model photos and a panorama drawing and a panorama photo. The aim was to reduce the Polish metropolis to around 40,000 inhabitants and to create a German-dominated core city through the so-called dismantling of the Polish city and the evacuation of the Jewish population.

Participation in the western campaign

After a few days of vacation, which Groß spent in his own home built in 1938 in Veitshöchheim near Würzburg, he returned to work with his old unit in Sterkrade. The unit was now used to prepare for the western campaign and built a road between Wesel and Geldern for this purpose. Groß took part in the war against Holland and France, which began on May 10, 1940 and led him to the Spanish border. In September 1940 he was assigned to the construction of a fuel and ammunition storage facility in a wooded area north of Warsaw.

City planning officer in Würzburg

In June 1941, Groß was able to return to Würzburg. In the meantime, and without his knowledge, he was elected to the new town planning council in absentia on December 20, 1940. An advertisement had not been submitted and Albert Speer had made a positive statement on November 19, 1940. Groß - meanwhile senior building officer - was able to take over this office on June 10, 1941, since his UK position had been obtained by Gauleiter Hellmuth in the meantime.

In the next one and a half years, Groß devoted himself to the new economic plan and the planning for the redesign of Würzburg as the Gau capital. He was supported in this and a. by Hans skull, who was not drafted into the armed forces for health reasons. The design plans continued with interruptions even during Groß's absence and were completed between October and December 1940. In a letter dated February 19, 1941, the General Building Inspector Speer had already summarized the planning status to Reich Treasurer Franz Xaver Schwarz : “The basic urban planning has been completed and approved by the Führer. At the foot of the fortress - on the other side of the Main - a district will be built, for which individual designs have not yet been made. The person responsible for the basic urban planning is the architect, Baurat Groß, currently in the field. ”More and more new variants of the bank development ultimately resulted in a preliminary final version from October 1941.

On May 13, 1942, Groß presented his planning and the revised economic plan to the city council. The core of the urban redesign concept was a Gauforum divided into two by the Main . The monumental buildings such as the Volkshalle, bell tower, party and administration buildings, etc. as well as the parade area were planned on the left side of the Main, while on the opposite side of the Main at the end of the Julius Promenade, various cultural buildings with Main Promenade were to create a new recreational area. Particular emphasis was placed on the visual relationship between the two bank developments. Plan No. E-300, which was developed from plan variant "0" favored by Hitler, and the subsequent plan developments with the designations up to No. E 330, show an approx. 100 × 200 m open rectangle parallel to the course of the river as a parade area. Around which several buildings with large inner courtyards for the party administration are grouped. The bell tower, which is obligatory for Gauforen, was planned a little to the north of the parade ground. Terraces, external stairs, embankment and retaining walls surrounded the Volkshalle, which was planned at a right angle to the longitudinal axis of the parade ground and was to be pushed between the Deutschhaus and Schottenangerkirche. The final redesign plan on a scale of 1: 200 and in the format 326 × 59 cm is dated April 9, 1942 and includes the entire spatial program for the redesign of Würzburg, which should go far beyond the Gauforum already described. Various urban buildings such as the theater, the town hall and the 1931 war memorial in the Hussar Grove were also affected by the planning. The construction of a party hotel was also part of it, as was the redevelopment of Markt-, Barbarossaplatz and Juliuspromenade as well as the construction of two more bridges over the Main. What is certain is that Gross’s planning provided for a massive intervention in the traditional cityscape. In contrast to the corresponding plans in the other 31 redesigned cities, the plan concept dispensed with oversized and immeasurable buildings, as they are known as an expression of the National Socialist claim to rule in the form of a programmatic intimidation architecture. Rather, the aim was to blend it discreetly into the cityscape.

In addition to these drafts, which were already utopian when the plan was ready, Gross also planned two camps in the south and north of Würzburg in a very profane and realistic manner to accommodate 450 and 500 Russian prisoners of war, respectively, who were deployed in the city's factories.

A visit by the President of the German Academy for Urban Development and Regional Planning , Reinhold Niemeyer , to Würzburg on January 5, 1943, led to his assignment to the Central Technical Office of the Reich Commissariat East in Riga, which is part of Organization Todt (OT) . In Berlin, Groß completed a training period and was then appointed head of "Technical Planning East" with the rank of OT senior site manager in March 1943, with the task of carrying out "preparatory work for peace planning" for the cities of Riga, Libau and Reval as well as planning for to make the Daugava navigable and to design a canal to southern Russia. With the conquest of Riga by the Red Army on October 13, 1944, the activities of the OT there ended. Their employees were ordered to Wroclaw via Danzig to be deployed in the Owl Mountains in the construction of the new Führer headquarters "Riese" . Groß was also personally in Auschwitz to meet the demands of concentration camp prisoners who were used in large numbers for the construction work . His job was to record around two dozen OT deployment sites for the construction work on the new headquarters and to coordinate their activities. But this project could no longer be carried out either. Shortly before the encirclement of Wroclaw by the Red Army on February 15, 1945, the OT staff was deployed in the direction of Pölitz near Stettin to repair a large hydrogenation plant there. The advancing front, however, thwarted this project as well. Groß therefore returned to Berlin and received a leave of absence from OT General Heinrich Roßkotten , who previously worked as a trainee lawyer for him in Speyer, with which he could return via Weimar to Würzburg , which was completely destroyed by the British bombing on March 16, 1945 could. That was the end of the war for Groß. He was able to avoid captivity in the United States due to his release from the Wehrmacht in 1941, which was entered in his military service card. He had buried his OT uniform in the woods.

After the war

As early as April 1945, Groß moved into an improvised office in Würzburg, where he continued to perform his official duties as town planning officer until June 2, 1946. After the great losses through death and imprisonment as well as the numerous layoffs, its staff consisted of only four employees. Finally, under pressure from the US military government, Groß was also dismissed from the service of the city. His former colleague, Skull, left the company in 1945 and became a master builder. The former head of the building construction office, Rudolf Schlick, had also been dismissed before Groß. Otto Nürnberger was killed in 1943.

As a result, Groß set up himself as a private architect and, thanks to his connections, was quickly successful. The successful planning for the new building of the Städtische Sparkasse am Kürschnerhof in 1948 resulted in further orders from banking and church circles. Groß was thus able to reject an offer from the new Mayor of Würzburg, Hans Löffler , to return to the city's service, with the remark that "a political slip cannot be undone with a backflip".

Groß spent the last 20 years of his life in an old people's home in Augsburg, where he died on February 5, 1992 at the age of 96. His estate is administered by the Architekturmuseum München.

Buildings in Würzburg

Former HJ home in Würzburg-Heidingsfeld, architect Hubert Groß

Former Berthold School in Würzburg by Hubert Groß

• 1935: New youth hostel, Burkarder Straße 44
• 1936–1938: Berthold-Schule, Von-Luxburg-Straße (today's Goethe-Volksschule), in the book by Gerdy Troost (ed.): Building in the New Reich, Vol. II, Bayreuth 1943, illustrated on p. 123; 49 ° 47 '8.7 "  N , 9 ° 57' 7.43"  E
• 1936–1938: HJ-Heim in Würzburg-Heidingsfeld (today family center), Frau-Holle-Weg, full half-timbered building in Heimatschutz style , as a prime example in the book by Gerdy Troost (publisher): Building in the New Reich, Vol. II, Bayreuth 1943, shown on p. 112; 49 ° 45 ′ 42.7 "  N , 9 ° 56 ′ 12.8"  E
• 1936/1937: Sparkasse branch at Eppstraße 13a (today 15)
• 1932–1936: clay pit settlement in Würzburg-Heidingsfeld
• 1934: Farmer's path colony in Würzburg-Heidingsfeld, Kolonieweg 22–32
• 1933–1935: Arcade colony, Frankfurter Strasse, Brunostrasse, Bohlleitenweg
• 1934/1935: Settlement for the less well-off, Nürnberger Straße / Am Faulenberg
• 1936–1938: Keesburg settlement , Damaschkestrasse, Kettelerstrasse, Schanzstrasse, Bodelschwinghstrasse and Cronthalstrasse
• 1933/1934: Residential development on Mainaustraße, Rotenhanstraße, Scharnhorststraße, Ysenburgstraße and Eiseneckstraße
• 1934: Small apartments, Robert-Koch-Straße
• 1936: Volkswohnungen, Petrinistraße 38–42, Wittelsbacher Platz 4–6, Wittelsbacher Straße 8–14, 25–27
• 1935/1936: People's apartments, Rottendorfer Strasse
• 1935: Wine tasting room of the citizens' hospital "Zum Heiligen Geist", Hofstall
• 1948: Municipal savings bank, Kürschnerhof
• 1953: General local health insurance fund, Kardinal-Faulhaber-Platz
• 1954: Nordsternhaus, Kaiserstraße / Röntgenring
• 1955: “Arena-Haus”, Domstrasse / Sternplatz, reinforced concrete frame construction with travertine cladding
• 1956: Kürschnerhof 7 office building
• 1959/1960: Commercial building Kürschnerhof 1

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Peter Weidisch: Würzburg in the "Third Reich". In: Ulrich Wagner (Hrsg.): History of the city of Würzburg. 4 volumes, Volume I-III / 2, Theiss, Stuttgart 2001-2007; III / 1–2: From the transition to Bavaria to the 21st century. 2007, ISBN 978-3-8062-1478-9 , p. 227.
2. ↑ Peter Weidisch: Würzburg in the "Third Reich". 2007, p. 227.
3. ↑ In this context, the term “economic plan” does not designate a component of the budget in the sense of cameralistics , but rather that according to the Housing Settlement Act of September 22, 1933 ( RGBl. I p. 659), amended by the law of September 27, 1939 (RGBl. I p. 1246), a mandatory plan for overall communal development. This plan can thus be regarded as the forerunner of today's land use plan as a preparatory master plan .
4. ↑ Peter Weidisch: Würzburg in the "Third Reich". In: Ulrich Wagner (Hrsg.): History of the city of Würzburg. 4 volumes, Volume I-III / 2, Theiss, Stuttgart 2001-2007; III / 1–2: From the transition to Bavaria to the 21st century. 2007, ISBN 978-3-8062-1478-9 , pp. 254-256.
5. ^ Minutes of the council meeting of the city of Würzburg on August 15, 1939
6. ↑ Peter Weidisch (2007), p. 254.
7. ↑ Peter Weidisch (2007), pp. 227 and 254–256.
8. ↑ Quoted from Josef Dülffer u. a., p. 75.
9. ^ Sybille Grübel: Timeline of the history of the city from 1814-2006 . In: Ulrich Wagner (Hrsg.): History of the city of Würzburg . 4 volumes, Volume I-III / 2, Theiss, Stuttgart 2001-2007; III / 1–2: From the transition to Bavaria to the 21st century. Volume 2, 2007, ISBN 978-3-8062-1478-9 , pp. 1225-1247; here: p. 1238.

literature

• Niels Gutschow , Barbara Klain: Destruction and Utopia. City planning Warsaw 1939–1945 . Hamburg 1994, ISBN 3-88506-223-2 .
• Niels Gutschow: mania for order. Architects plan in the "Germanized East" 1939–1945 . Gütersloh 2001, ISBN 3-7643-6390-8 .
• Helmut Weihsmann: Building under the swastika. Architecture of doom . Promedia-Verlag, Vienna 1998, ISBN 3-85371-113-8 .
• Josef Dülffer, Jochen Thies , Josef Henke: Hitler's cities. Building policy in the Third Reich. A documentation . Cologne / Vienna 1978, ISBN 3-412-03477-0 .
• Jörg Paczkowski: The reconstruction of the city of Würzburg after 1945 . Würzburg 1995, ISBN 3-87717-803-0 .
• Peter Fasel: Contributions to Nazi history in Lower Franconia . Self-published, Würzburg 1996.
• Leo Günther: Würzburger Chronik 1933–1936 . Wuerzburg 1936.
• Gerdy Troost (Ed.): Building in the New Reich , Vol. II. Bayreuth 1943.
• Hubert Groß: suns and fountains. Our Family History and Stories , 1976. (unpublished memoirs)

Web links

Commons : Hubert Groß  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Hubert Gross. In: arch INFORM .
• Hubert Gross . In: wuerzburgwiki.de
• Plan Pabsta (Polish)