John Lütgens

John Lütgens (born March 24, 1875 in Hamburg ; † March 22, 1950 in Cologne ) was a German architect who mainly worked in Cologne.

Life and Buildings

John Lütgens, actually Eduard Lütgens, was Protestant according to his death certificate , but possibly had Jewish roots. There is only incomplete information about his biography. He probably received his training in Hamburg. He left this city on November 24, 1898 to move to Gelsenkirchen . There he lived at Kampstrasse 6 and worked in the office of the architect Fidel Kindle . On April 1, 1902, he married Tiene Baer in Berlin . The son Hans Lütgens emerged from the marriage and became a plasterer .

The Lütgens family lived in Cologne from around 1907, where Lütgens initially worked as a salaried architect. After opening his own architectural office, he moved from Antwerpener Straße 13 to Neue Maastrichter Straße 3. The earliest buildings that can be assigned to Lütgens were on Arnulfstraße opposite the residential buildings that Georg Falck built there. Before the First World War , Lütgens built, among other things, the house at Arnulfstrasse 6 (1912–1913), the house at Arnulfstrasse 12, which was partially destroyed in the war, and the houses at Arnulfstrasse 8, 10 and 14. The house at Konradstrasse 3 also suffered war damage and was rebuilt changed.

In the 1920s, Lütgens moved to rent the house at Kendenicher Strasse 6, and later bought this single-family home. Fritz Salz and Carl Muschard lived in the neighborhood, and they may have been friends with Lütgens. In 1924 he founded the architectural office Knappstein & Lütgens with Gustav Adolf Knappstein , which only existed until the end of 1925. Still, this office was very productive. Among other things, the houses Mathiaskirchstrasse 11 and 13 in Bayenthal and the houses Kyllburger Strasse 14 and 16 in Sülz were planned. In 1925, the building contractor Heinrich Hirnstein had the house at Breibergstrasse 6 in Klettenberg designed by Knappstein & Lütgens, where his construction business, founded in 1902, settled. Later, however, Hirnstein only worked with Gustav Adolf Knappstein and no longer with John Lütgens.

The plans for the Hardtgenbuscher Kirchweg 123 and 125 houses in Ostheim also date from the time with Knappstein, and were designed in 1924. However, the builders changed architects before the building was completed; the changed designs were carried out by August Liesenfeld . In his work on the Jewish architects in Cologne, the author Wolfram Hagspiel emphasizes that Lütgens' works are often no longer known today and that it depends on chance whether they can still be identified. But he thinks that each of the known objects testifies to a “safe, artistically balanced design”. Lütgens' buildings are more traditional than avant-garde. As an example, Hagspiel cites the house at Lotharstrasse 32 in Sülz, which Lütgens built for himself in 1927 and signed with his name and the association's name "VRA".

Lütgens also planned at least one building for Vingster Terraingesellschaft mbH on Homarstrasse in Vingst and, in 1928/1929, an apartment building for Peter Büllesbach at Guilleaumestrasse 15 in Buchheim .

In 1930 Lütgens owned the houses at Kendenicher Strasse 6, Arnulfstrasse 8, Kyllburger Strasse 16 and Lotharstrasse 32 and was evidently well off. He sold the house on Kendenicher Strasse around 1935 to move to Lotharstrasse 32. He is said to have survived some years of the Third Reich in hiding; on March 24, 1945 he is said to have been registered by the US Army as a Jew who had survived the Third Reich. The address given at that time was Kyllburger Straße 16. He lived there until his death. His widow left Cologne around 1958 to move to Berlin.

literature

• Wolfram Hagspiel: Cologne and its Jewish architects. Cologne 2010, ISBN 978-3-7616-2294-0 , pp. 329-333.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Hagspiel 2010, p. 331.
2. ↑ Hagspiel 2010, p. 329 refers to this information on the emigrant newspaper Aufbau of April 13, 1945.