Johann Kamps

Peter Johannes "Johann" Kamps (born April 19, 1890 in Krefeld , † November 20, 1943 in Hamburg ) was a German architect .

Live and act

Johann Kamps most likely did not complete any studies after school. In 1909 he took a position at the Royal Prussian Railway Directorate in Krefeld, where he met Carl Bensel , who had worked here since 1905. In 1910 they both went to Düsseldorf , where Bensel went into business for himself as an architect and Kamps worked in his office. Bensel successfully took part in a competition for the development of the edge of Mönckebergstrasse in Hamburg. His designs for office buildings were considered to be the most progressive structures that were built in the Hanseatic city in the style of reform architecture at that time. In 1913, Bensel and Kamps moved to Hamburg to build these structures.

During the First World War , the office received almost no orders; even after the end of the war, construction activity only increased slowly until the end of 1923 due to inflation. From 1924 Bensel worked again with Kamps. Bensel drew up the plans and was involved in cultural policy, while Kamps often organized the construction work. In the period that followed, Kamps also made its own plans for a total of 10 churches in Hamburg. This made him one of the most important architects whose plans were used to build churches in Hamburg between the two world wars. Kamps was of the Catholic faith and therefore planned buildings for the Catholic Church, Bensel realized Protestant churches.

During the Second World War , Kamps and Bendel took part in competitions and carried out urban development measures on behalf of Konstanty Gutschow . The architect's apartment was damaged during Operation Gomorrah , and Kamps himself was probably injured in the process. Together with his wife Marie, he spent the following time in Othmarschen with Heinrich Amsinck , who was also an architect in the office of Bensel, Kamps & Amsinck. Johann Kamps died there a few months later in late 1943.

Buildings

The first church building in Kamps was the St. Franziskuskirche in Hamburg-Barmbek-Nord . With the building erected in 1926/27, the architect oriented himself on the ideas of the New Building, which was considered modern in the Weimar Republic . By 1938, the St. Paulus Church in Billstedt (1928/29), the Church of the Holy Family in Langenhorn (1935) and the St. Theresienkirche in Altona (1937/38) were built according to his plans . Kamps also used traditional elements such as brick facades and exposed wooden ceilings. However, the arrangement inside the church deviated from conventional arrangements. So he merged the areas for the parish and the sanctuary or only hinted at a separation. This design only became widely accepted with the Second Vatican Council . Kamps tried to express liturgical motifs architecturally through asymmetrical rooms and directed incidence of light and to move the altar and sacrament into the center of the church.

After the end of the global economic crisis , Kamps was given the opportunity to plan and implement other churches. These buildings appear a bit more conservative, even though Kamps also used the styles of the mid-1920s as modern church buildings.

literature

• Jan Lubitz: Shaped space. The Hamburg architects Bensel, Kamps & Amsinck (=  series of publications of the Hamburg Architecture Archive ). Dölling and Galitz Verlag, Munich / Hamburg 2016, ISBN 978-3-86218-070-7 .
• Jan Lubitz: Kamps, Johann . In: Franklin Kopitzsch, Dirk Brietzke (Hrsg.): Hamburgische Biographie . tape 4 . Wallstein, Göttingen 2008, ISBN 978-3-8353-0229-7 , pp. 183-184 .

Web links

• Karl H. Hoffmann Bensel & Kamps on Architekturarchiv-web.de, Hamburg Architecture Archive of the Hamburg Chamber of Architects