Joseph Laské

Joseph Laské (born December 6, 1816 in Mainz ; † November 21, 1865 there ; full name: Johann Baptist Joseph Karl Laské ) was a German architect who worked as a city ​​and cathedral architect in Mainz. During his administration, the Electoral Palace and the Mainz Cathedral were rebuilt and renovated. Laské also contributed to the investigation of historical buildings in Mainz with his work.

education

Joseph Laské attended school in Mainz and then studied with Friedrich von Gärtner at the Academy of Arts in Munich from 1837 . Then he passed the Hessian district builder exam with the grade "good" and entered the state service of the Grand Ducal Hesse . From 1840 he worked for the district architect Peter Wetter in Alzey . In 1845 he applied for the position of a municipal building inspector in Mainz, which he was also able to take up.

Activity as city and cathedral builder

Structural situation in Mainz around 1844,
the new warehouses on the Rhine

In Mainz, Laské was responsible for supervising the construction of the new municipal warehouses on the banks of the Rhine . Due to his skills, Laské was increasingly entrusted with work from the area of ​​responsibility of the city architect. The then city architect Johann Heinrich Hartmann was not considered competent enough and was voted out by the local council in 1845. However, he did not retire from active service until 1848.

After Hartmann's departure, Laské took over the provisional management of the municipal building department. Two years later, in 1850, he was finally appointed city architect of Mainz. In 1856 Laské was elected master builder. The opposing candidate was Ignaz Opfermann . However, Laské won the election with 11:10 votes. Laské fulfilled both functions until his death in 1865. At the beginning of his activity he took over the management of renovation work on the Electoral Palace. In the individual parts of the building, museum and library rooms were set up for the Roman-Germanic Central Museum , which was founded in 1852 . When the powder tower exploded in Upper Mainz in 1857 , a large part of this area of ​​the city was devastated and there was considerable construction activity under Laské's construction management. Nevertheless, only a few buildings have survived from his tenure, such as a few houses in the neo-Gothic style.

Joseph Laské's grave

Extensive restoration work began on Mainz Cathedral under Laské's direction. He himself also created the designs for the color redesign of the interior in the Nazarene style, on which he worked closely with Philipp Veit , but often also controversially. In 1926, the color scheme was almost completely changed due to a changed aesthetic feeling, and the work of Laské and Veits disappeared without prior documentation. Under his leadership, the first plans for an expansion of the urban area beyond the fortress walls that existed at the time began. To this end, he cooperated closely with the engineers of the fortress administration and made his own extension and development proposals with them.

For Grand Duke Ludwig III. and the grand ducal family built the particularly representative proscenium boxes in the Mainz city theater in 1863 .

When Laské died in 1865, Eduard Kreyssig was his successor a year later . This succeeded in decisively shaping the development of the city of Mainz. Ludwig Metternich, Mathias Metternich's son , continued his work as a cathedral builder. Joseph Laské's tomb in neo-Gothic style is located in the main cemetery in Mainz . Laské is shown on a half-relief with a blueprint and compass in hand.

further activities

Laské also worked as a painter and made a name for himself with views of the city of Mainz. In addition, he also contributed to the research and documentation of historical buildings in Mainz during his tenure. He was also on the board of the Mainz antiquity association. He was also a member of the Mainz Masonic lodge "The Friends of Concord".

family

Joseph Laské, son of an officer, was married to Gertrud, nee Goldschmidt. Her son was Adolph M. Laské, who later became a legal advisor in Frankfurt am Main and a collector of an important graphic collection with around 13,400 sheets from the 16th to 19th centuries, which he later donated to what is now the Landesmuseum Mainz .

Fonts

• Concerning the tour of the Mainz-Binger Bahn through the city of Mainz. Report of the city architect to the grand-ducal mayor of the provincial capital Mainz. Mainz 1858.

literature

• Clemens Kissel : Stories and anecdotes from old Mainz. City architect Josef Laske 1857-1863. In: Mainzer Journal , No. 156, of July 7, 1911.
• Wolfgang Balzer: Mainz. Personalities of the city's history. Volume 3: Business people, epochal pioneers, builders, fast nights, eccentrics, originals. Kügler Verlag, Ingelheim 1989, ISBN 3-924124-05-1 .
• Matthias Dietz-Lenssen: 1000 years of Mainz Cathedral. Part IV: Fortified and refurbished into the next millennium. In: Mainzer Vierteljahresheft , Edition 4 2009, p. 20. (online as PDF document; 5.5 MB)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Silvia Speckert: Ignaz Opfermann (1799–1866): Selected examples of his construction activity in the vicinity of the city of Mainz = housework to obtain the academic degree of a Magister [!] Artium. Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz 1989. Machine-written. Mainz City Archives: 1991/25 No. 11 (text and table volume), p. 3.
2. ↑ see the list of cultural monuments in Mainz-Altstadt with entries including Kartäuserstraße 6-16, Augustinerstraße 39, Walpodenstraße 3 etc. and the list of cultural monuments in Mainz-Oberstadt with the Kästrich complex
3. ^ Matthias Dietz-Lenssen: 1000 years of Mainz Cathedral. Part IV: Fortified and refurbished into the next millennium. In: Mainzer Vierteljahreshefte , Edition 4 2009, p. 20.
4. ^ State Theater Mainz
5. ↑ Tomb Joseph Laskés ( Memento of 8 July 2010 at the Internet Archive ), partial view