International Building Exhibition 1913

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Map of the exhibition

The International Building Exhibition 1913 ( IBA ) in Leipzig (more precisely the title International World Special Exhibition for Building and Living ) was a performance exhibition of the building industry at the beginning of the 20th century. Up until then it was the largest exhibition of its kind in the world.

The planning

The exhibition was intended to show the technical possibilities for coping with urban and residential construction, which had become possible and necessary due to industrialization at the turn of the century and the catastrophic social and hygienic conditions in large cities. The presentation of new building materials and construction methods, new findings in building physics as well as new building equipment products ("home hygiene") should be carried out in a comprehensive manner, so that not only the professional world, but a broad general audience was addressed.

Main entrance

After initially considering the front part of the Rosental or the Frankfurter Wiesen for the exhibition , the choice finally fell on the 400,000 m 2 site behind Gut Thonberg on Reitzenhainer (now Prager) Strasse up to the one just before Completion standing Monument to the Battle of the Nations . The Leipzig architects Georg Weidenbach and Richard Tschammer won a competition for the design of the exhibition . They relied on the design of the Straße des 18. Oktober as a main entrance with a bridge over the railway line dividing the area and a lime tree avenue perpendicular to the main entrance on Reitzenhainer Straße.

For the most part wooden constructions were planned for the exhibition buildings, which were plastered on the outside and coated on the inside with a flame-retardant fabric. They were scheduled for demolition after the exhibition was over. The concrete hall , which still exists today (as an event palace ), was an exception .

The exhibition

Monument of the iron
Concrete hall

The exhibition opened on Saturday, May 3rd, 1913 in the presence of the King of Saxony . In numerous halls, the construction industry and the building trade, scientific institutions and professional associations, but also city and state administrations demonstrated their capabilities. A special aspect was the competition between steel construction and reinforced concrete construction. The former was represented by the Iron Monument , a four-tier, octagonal, 30-meter-high pyramid made of steel profile parts, designed by Bruno Taut and Franz Hoffmann , crowned by a gold-plated sheet zinc ball nine meters in diameter. The counterpart was the concrete hall of Wilhelm Kreis , were installed in the 24,000 tons of concrete and 400 tons of steel. The 120-meter-long structure had a central dome 28 meters high and 30 meters in diameter.

In a separate area in an open field south of the main exhibition at which a special Verbindungsbahn wrong, had nine different architects - including Peter Dybwad 48 detached and 24 multi-family homes as a model of - Karl Poser and the office of Georg Weidenbach and Richard Tschammer garden city built . This settlement was retained and, as the Marienbrunn garden suburb , formed the basis for today's Leipzig district of Marienbrunn .

The visual artists contributed the “Leipzig Annual Exhibition”, which offered an overview of the artistic work of the last 30 years, along with a pavilion with a caricature exhibition.

The replicas of old Leipzig around 1800 on a smaller scale (architect Fritz Drechsler ), which included the Pleißenburg , the Peterstor , the Princely House and the Pauline Church , contributed to the display value in the sense of addressing a broad audience . To the south of the railway line there was a model village with a church, cemetery, model yard and a special agricultural exhibition. The recreation park with its “mountain scenery railway” and “love mill” had the character of popular amusement. 15 innkeepers took care of the physical well-being in the main restaurant, in the main café and in other special dining facilities such as the restaurant district with the Bavarian beer halls and a giant barrel.

Bridge between the exhibition parts

The consequences

When the exhibition ended in October 1913, four million visitors had seen it. The aim of making the exhibition a folk festival was apparently achieved. Nevertheless, in the end there was a debt amount of more than half a million marks, the settlement of which was disputed between the city, the exhibition company and the exhibitors until 1917. The Saxon government did not participate financially, not even approved a money lottery.

The following year the International Exhibition for Book Trade and Graphics ( BUGRA ) was held on the exhibition grounds, for which IBA exhibition buildings were still used. With the outbreak of World War I , the area became a storage area for war material. It was only used for exhibition purposes again with the start of the technical fair in spring 1920.

After the Second World War , the idea of ​​the International Building Exhibition was taken up again, but was now always linked to specific projects (see International Building Exhibition ).

  • Halls for spatial art and building materials

  • In the courtyard of the reconstructed Pleißenburg

  • Model village with school and church

  • Romanian wine restaurant

  • Biedermeier restaurant and Pleißenburgturm

  • Water slide in the recreation park

literature

Web links

Commons : International Building Exhibition 1913  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Klaus-Dieter Heidrich, Herold Hofmeister, Herbert Ricken: The IBA 1913. Leipziger Blätter No. 13, 1988, pp. 14-18
  2. ↑ a b Horst Riedel: Stadtlexikon Leipzig from A - Z. PRO LEIPZIG, Leipzig 2005, ISBN 3-936508-03-8 , p. 264
  3. ↑ Ferdinand Werner : The long way to new building . Volume 1: Concrete: 43 men invent the future . Wernersche Verlagsgesellschaft, Worms 2016. ISBN 978-3-88462-372-5 , pp. 271-274.

Coordinates: 51 ° 19 ′ 4.6 ″  N , 12 ° 24 ′ 9.9 ″  E