Johannes Grotjan (architect)

Johannes Grotjan (second person on the right) among the builders of the Hamburg City Hall

Johannes Martin Friedrich Grotjan (born October 18, 1843 in Hamburg ; † October 5, 1922 there ) was a German architect .

Live and act

Johannes Grotjan was the son of the merchant Johann Georg Abraham Grotjan. He attended school and trained as a carpenter. From 1862 to 1864 he studied at the building trade school in Nienburg on the Weser and then worked as a journeyman carpenter. In 1865 he went to Munich to see Rudolf Gottgetreu , in whose studio he worked for two years. Then he returned to Hamburg. Here he worked for the construction company Johannes G. Minck and from 1868 for the Berlin-Hamburg Railway Company . As a trained architect with practical experience in construction, Grotjan had completed an apprenticeship as an architect that was common at the time.

In 1871 Grotjan opened his own office in Hamburg as a freelance architect. He planned single and multi-family houses that quickly found favor with the upper middle class. Grotjan participated in the peripheral development of the colonnades and in new buildings outside the city center. Since the gate was not closed at the end of 1861 , the Alster foreland was a sought-after residential area outside of Hamburg, where Grotjan planned many buildings. He built mainly in the Renaissance style with richly structured facades and balanced proportions. He intended to give buildings representative features and to place them in an appropriate historical context.

When the Hamburg City Hall was to be rebuilt, Grotjan took part in the architecture competition. Here he received the second prize. Since the building project seemed too big, Grotjan redesigned the building with his partner Henry Robertson, who died a little later, and seven other architects. As part of the work, there were two internal competitions: While Martin Haller and Leopold Lamprecht were creating the floor plan, Grotjan designed the exterior facade. He consciously chose stylistic devices from the Flemish Renaissance , which were supposed to embody bourgeois self-confidence.

In contrast to the historical motifs that he used for the town hall, Grotjan planned otherwise modern and functional floor plans. As an architect, he also designed office buildings that were emerging at the time . These included the Börsenhaus am Alten Wall (1895), the Neidlinger-Haus (1886) and the fashion house Gebr. Hirschfeld (1906; Aryanized by Franz Fahning in 1938) with modern skeleton constructions and historicizing facades.

Since the construction activities almost completely came to a standstill due to the First World War , Grotjan received only a few orders during this time. He realized a few less extensive structures and increasingly went into retirement. His son, who was a trained architect and who was supposed to continue his father's business, died during the First World War. His second wife, whom the architect survived by a year, died in 1921.

Buildings (selection)

• 1877–1878: Colonnaden 68/70 office building
• 1886–1897: Hamburg City Hall , together with Bernhard Hanssen , Wilhelm Meerwein , Wilhelm Hauers , Hugo Stammann , Gustav Zinnow
• 1885: Neidlinger-Haus at Admiralitätstrasse 77, corner of Michaelisbrücke, Hamburg
• 1893: Carriage building factory, New Horse Market 27, Hamburg
• 1894–1895: Börsenhaus, Alter Wall 32, Hamburg (with Puls & Richter)
• 1898–1899: Messtorff'sche Villa at Wentorfer Straße 38, Bergedorf , 1925–27 converted into Bergedorf Town Hall
• 1902–1903: Speicherstadttrathaus (HFLG main administration building) in Hamburg's Speicherstadt (with Bernhard Hanssen )
• 1905–1906: Fahning House, Neuer Wall 19, Hamburg
• 1911–1912: Jerusalem Church and associated Jerusalem Hospital in Hamburg-Eimsbüttel

literature

• Jan Lubitz: Grotjan, Johannes . In: Franklin Kopitzsch, Dirk Brietzke (Hrsg.): Hamburgische Biographie . tape 5 . Wallstein, Göttingen 2010, ISBN 978-3-8353-0640-0 , p. 157-158 .