Joseph Schlippe

Joseph Schlippe

Joseph Karl Paul Rosa Schlippe (born June 23, 1885 in Darmstadt ; † December 28, 1970 in Freiburg im Breisgau ) was a German architect , town planner and construction officer . He was the chief construction director of the city of Freiburg im Breisgau.

Career

Training and activity as an academic teacher

Joseph Schlippe was born as the youngest son of the Hessian Ministerialrat Paul Angelus Schlippe and his wife Rosa in Darmstadt, attended the humanistic high school there and studied architecture at the TH Darmstadt from 1903 to 1910. In Frankfurt am Main he passed the exam to become a government master builder ( assessor in public building management). From 1915 he worked at the military construction department in Charlottenburg . In 1920 he became a Dr.-Ing. In Darmstadt with Friedrich Pützer . PhD; Subject of his dissertation : " Louis Remy de la Fosse and his buildings". After the war he taught at the TH Darmstadt.

Architect and urban planner

Former municipal traffic office built by Schlippe

The next professional stations were the Reichs New Building Office Koblenz , the Reichsbauamt Darmstadt and the Reichs Vermögensamt Wiesbaden , where various buildings were built according to Schlippe's designs. In 1925, under Lord Mayor Karl Bender , Joseph Schlippe succeeded Karl Gruber as head of the municipal building department in Freiburg im Breisgau and technical director of the Freiburg settlement company (until 1952).

time of the nationalsocialism

After following the takeover of the Nazis in 1933 Mayor Charles Bender had given up his post in April 1933, put Schlippe his work as city architect under the Nazis Franz Kerber continued, the based on the Decree of the Reich President for the Protection of the German people into office had been transferred. Shortly after taking office, Schlippe had to give the new Lord Mayor Kerber information about why the nail tree from the First World War in 1931 was removed from its long-term location at Schwabentor under Bender . After Schlippe had asserted that the motives were conservational and not political, the tree was erected again on the south side of the gate a few days later, but fell into disrepair over the years. Even before the takeover of power, a competition for the construction of an ornamental fountain in the Wiehre had begun, and Schlippe was a member of the jury. After the deadline had been extended by a month, the sculptor Helmut Hopp won together with the architect Carl Anton Meckel (1875–1938), a close friend of Schlippes, to whom he was to dedicate an obituary in 1951.

When he was commissioned in June 1933 to draw up competition documents for a monument to the national uprising , he suggested a stone wreath à la Stonehenge on the Schlierberg , in the middle of which the Schlageter figure Hugo Knittels could have been placed.

1935 Schlippe was promoted to the city's senior building director; At Kerber's insistence, he turned down an offer at the Technical University of Danzig .

A visit by Gauleiter Robert Wagner to Freiburg on April 1, 1937 prompted Kerber and Schlippe to have a plaster model made of part of Freiburg's inner city, which was supposed to show the planned changes as part of the Freiburg general development plan in the area of ​​the Rotteckring. This model, which was exhibited at the regional show of the Baden municipalities in Karlsruhe in autumn 1937 and, among other things, documents the planned conversion of the former Werderstrasse into a parade boulevard, shows the area where the Freiburg synagogue still stood at that time . The synagogue, which was initially set on fire during the Reichspogromnacht and blown up on November 10, 1938 by order of the civil engineering department, had already given way to a representative NS building (study house of the university) in Schlippe's 1937 plan, which fits into the monumental ensemble of university and theater should. On December 1, 1937, Schlippe's corresponding draft for the general development plan was submitted.

In 1939 Schlippe supported efforts to plant a tree in honor of Hitler. However , he rejected the Unterlinden location planned by Horticultural Director Schimpf , as he viewed the dismantling of the Marienbrunnen there by Julius Seitz as an iconoclast and this "fashionable disease" had to be countered.

In 1940 Schlippe became “State Plenipotentiary for the Care of the Newer Monuments of Art in Alsace” and he was able to evade the “delegation” as “Strasbourg building director”. From 1940 to 1944 he had to go to Alsace for two days every week, where he was personally appointed as a monument conservator by the "chief of civil administration" Robert Wagner.

In June 1942, all copper and bronze monuments on public streets and squares ... owned by the municipalities were to be donated as metal . In addition to the Victory Monument , which Kerber refused to melt down voluntarily for the Fuehrer's birthday in 1940, according to Schlippe, only the Rotteck Monument should be spared. He was also willing to let Konrad Taucher melt down the Schneckenreiterbrunnen in Colombipark , even though it was owned by the Münsterbauverein. In a conversation with Robert Hiecke , who was responsible for the decision on borderline cases, Schlippe was also able to save the figures of Homer and Aristotle Cipri Adolf Bermann from the melting pot, who still flank the entrance of Collegiate Building I of the Albert Ludwigs University of Freiburg . The four statues on the Kaiserbrücke were melted down, as were the four statues on the town hall . Since both models and casts were missing, the town hall figures could not be re-cast. Schlippe justified himself in 1946 by stating that the production of plaster casts for new castings was prohibited. However, in 1942 he had offered the Münsterbauverein to have a cast of the Schneckenreiterbrunnen made so that it could be restored after the war.

Similar to Herbert Jensen in Kiel and Hans Pieper in Lübeck, Joseph Schlippe did not have to contend with serious personnel consequences after the end of the war in 1945, apart from Kerber's dismissal, and was able to continue his work almost seamlessly. With the express approval of the French occupying power, he became the head of the Freiburg reconstruction office. When he retired in 1951 as head of the building construction department, his long-time employee, Hans Geiges, was appointed his successor.

The reconstruction of Freiburg

Schlippe developed a reconstruction plan for the old town, which was badly damaged by the bombing in November 1944 as part of Operation Tigerfish . It essentially provided for the old streets to be retained. The city map of Freiburg was considered a historical monument of the Middle Ages. For the Kaiser-Joseph-Straße, Schlippe devised open arcades in the house facades to expand the pedestrian traffic area (popularly incorrectly called "arcades", although they do not always have arches). Schlippe had already developed this concept before the destruction of Freiburg and was now able to implement it. The historical legitimation as a supposedly medieval building form was derived from the comparison with the arcades of the old town of Bern, which like Freiburg was founded by the Zähringer dynasty. However, there is no evidence that there were arcades in medieval Freiburg. Likewise, before 1944, Schlippe had already presented his ideas for a cleanup and simplification of the lavishly decorated historicist house facades in Freiburg city center. His ideal was a simple, restrained architecture. Like the style imitations of historicism, however, he rejected modern steel and glass architecture. Against the ribbon windows and glass fronts of the modern age, he set the "perforated facade" as an ideal, in which the windows appear as holes in the wall of the building. His generation-typical rejection of the Wilhelminian style architecture led him to demand the cleaning up of those buildings that had survived the war unscathed. So he pushed through the demolition of the neo-Gothic gable tops of the Schwabentor as well as the destruction of the neo-baroque gable of the city theater. He also initiated similar actions in his work as a monument conservator in Baden.

Conservationist

In the years 1910 to 1915 Schlippe dedicated himself to monument conservation work in Frankfurt am Main. There he took up the Peterskirchhof with drawings and carried out conservation measures to preserve the tombs. Since 1929 he was head of the committee for the preservation of monuments of the regional association Badische Heimat . From 1934 he worked as a voluntary district caretaker for art and antiquity monuments in the Freiburg district. During the Second World War, from 1940 to 1944 he was a part-time state curator in Alsace . After the war he was acting head of the Baden State Monuments Office from 1946 to 1948. This was followed in the years 1951 to 1956 as head of the Baden State Office for Monument Preservation and Heritage Protection, which was renamed the State Office for Monument Preservation in the administrative district of South Baden in 1952. From 1956 Schlippe devoted himself to the inventory of the art monuments of the city of Freiburg (unfinished).

reception

Ute Scherb attests to Schlippe in connection with the assessment of the design for the mother fountain by Hopp and Meckel that it “obviously wasn't difficult for him to adapt both his taste and his expressions to the 'new times'.” Kerber was on Schlippe during the “can leave almost blind” throughout his term of office. In the course of planning a memorial for the national uprising in the first year of Kerber's rule, she suspected a “certain uncertainty” about Schlippes regarding the art policy of the National Socialists. He feared "violating the prescribed, but not clearly defined taste."

Freiburg owes the reconstruction of its badly damaged cityscape to the moderately conservative attitude of Schlippe, which was characterized by great respect for the phenomenon of the medieval city. He prevented the radical modernization plans that led to a profound redesign of the historic city complex in other cities. He stood in the way of attempts to establish modern architecture in Freiburg. His work as a monument conservationist was groundbreaking for the time. His lack of understanding of the architectural achievements of the late 19th century prompted him to enforce his aesthetic prejudices with allegedly "monument preservation" reasons by tearing down unpopular building elements.

Honors

Street in Freiburg

• 1952: Cross of Merit (Steckkreuz) of the Federal Republic of Germany
• In the Freiburg district of Betzenhausen , the street Schlippehof was named after him at the Seepark .

family

Schlippe was married to Maria, née Schimon (born August 29, 1896 in Essen , † April 5, 1986 in Breisach ). The son Bernhard Schlippe , who came from the marriage, worked as an architect and monument conservator.

plant

buildings

• New barracks in Königstein im Taunus , from 1924 (used as a grammar school and philosophical-theological college after World War II)
• Laubenkolonie settlement (200 apartments) and buildings on Nonnenmattenweg and Markgrafenstrasse (75 apartments) in Freiburg, 1929-31. Planning and construction management: Municipal Building Department under the direction of Schlippes
• Former municipal traffic office on Rotteckring, Freiburg, 1935–1936, (building with arcades )

Fonts

• Louis Remy de la Fosse and his buildings. Dissertation, Technical University of Darmstadt 1916.
• Darmstadt's architectural face. Darmstädter Tagblatt publishing house, Darmstadt 1938.
• The reconstruction plan for Freiburg. In: Die Neue Stadt, pp. 115–122, 1947.
• How Freiburg should be resurrected. In: Freiburger Almanach 1950. pp. 13–47.
• The Mindelsee and its surroundings. Hegau-Verlag Kugler, Singen 1980. (as co-author)
• Freiburg's architectural monuments and their restoration. In: Freiburg in Trümmern 1944–1952 . Walter Vetter (Ed.), Freiburg 1982.
• Can a city still be cozy today? In: Badische Heimat 1999, p. 526f. (published posthumously)
• The house of the Badische Heimat and its architect Carl Anton Meckel In Mein Heimatland Nr. 31, 1951, p. 195.

• Contributions in the series of publications of the Breisgau history association Schau-ins-Land :

Freiburg town houses of the Louis XVI period , no. 72, pp. 138–146.

Old Freiburg garden houses , No. 83, pp. 115–129.

The Basler Hof in Freiburg , No. 84/85, pp. 160–192.

literature

• Bernhard Vedral: Old town renovation and reconstruction planning in Freiburg i. Br. 1925-1951. On the 100th birthday of the chief construction director Prof. Dr.-Ing. Joseph Schlippe. 1985. (= City and History , Issue 8)
• Ulrich P. Ecker: Freiburg 1944–1994. Destruction and rebuilding. Freiburg im Breisgau 1994.
• Jürgen Gröning, Rüdiger Mag: 75 years of settlement society 1919–1994. Freiburg im Breisgau 1994.
• Paul Bert: 1950-2000. Half a century of building in Freiburg. In: Badische Heimat 1999, p. 531ff.
• Ute Scherb: "... embody the spirit of the new Germany." The Freiburg architect Joseph Schlippe and the design of the "New Strasbourg" , in: Journal of the Breisgau History Association "Schau-ins-Land" 125, 2006, p. 169 -184.
• Ute Scherb: We get the monuments we deserve. Freiburg monuments in the 19th and 20th centuries . Freiburg 2005, ISBN 3-923272-31-6 , p. 139 ff.
• Adolf J. Schmid : The father of the arcades. In: Badische Zeitung of December 28, 2000.
• Adolf J. Schmid: Schlippe, Joseph, architect a. Conservationists, 1885-1970 , in: Baden-Württembergische biographies> ., Vol 4, 2007, p 328 online at LEO-BW .
• Heinrich Schwendemann : November 11, 1948 - The city council approves the reconstruction plan , in: Auf Jahr und Tag - Freiburg's history of modern times Pfanz-Sponalgel / Regnath / Schwendemann / Widmann (ed.), Rombach Verlag Freiburg im Breisgau, 2015, p. 203 -226.

Web links

Commons : Joseph Schlippe  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Joseph Schlippe in the catalog of the German National Library
• Works by and about Joseph Schlippe  in the German Digital Library
• Written estate of Schlippe in the Freiburg City Archives, holdings K1 / 44 (PDF document with 1.36 MB, accessed on December 3, 2012)
• 90 years of Freiburg urban development - a documentation (PDF document with 1.5 MB)
• Schlippe, Joseph Karl Paul Rosa , details page at: www.leo-bw.de

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Scherb, p. 154
2. ↑ Extensive material that Schlippe had collected about him can now be found in his estate in the Freiburg City Archives .
3. ↑ Werner Wolf-Holzäpfel: The architect Max Meckel 1847-1910. Studies on the architecture and church building of historicism in Germany . Josef Fink, Lindenberg 2000, ISBN 3-933784-62-X . , P. 253.
4. ↑ Scherb, p. 146 f.
5. ↑ A photograph of the plaster model, which was shown to the public for the first time at the National Socialism exhibition in Freiburg in 2016/17, can be found at www.freiburg.de , accessed on August 24, 2020.
6. ↑ Markus Wolter: A previously unknown photo shows the destroyed Freiburg synagogue , in: Badische Zeitung , November 9, 2018; Online , accessed August 24, 2020.
7. ↑ Julia Wolrab: Scientific documentation of the research on the history of the Old Synagogue in Freiburg from an ownership perspective , Freiburg 2019; online at www.freiburg.de , accessed on August 24, 2020.
8. ↑ Scherb, p. 153.
9. ↑ Biography at www.leo-bw.de , accessed on August 25, 2020.
10. ↑ Scherb, p. 142 ff.
11. ↑ Jeffrey Diefendorf: In the wake of war: the reconstruction of German cities after World War II. , Oxford University Press, New York 1983, ISBN 0-19-507219-7 , pp. 181 and 258.
12. ↑ Klaus Humpert : Freiburg - a stroke of luck in Freiburg on the way to the "Green City" , Sven von Ungern-Sternberg (ed.), Rombach Verlag, Freiburg 2020
13. ↑ Peter Kalchthaler: Freiburg Mitte: Stadtgeschichte: Arcades did not exist on Kaiser-Joseph-Straße until after the Second World War. Badische Zeitung, June 27, 2016, accessed on June 27, 2016 . 
14. ↑ Scherb, p. 147.
15. ↑ Scherb, p. 147 ff.
16. ^ Martin Thoemmes: Schlippe, Bernhard . in: Biographical Lexicon for Schleswig-Holstein and Lübeck . Wachholtz, Neumünster 1982–2011. Vol. 12 - 2006. ISBN 3-529-02560-7 , page 376.
17. ↑ Preparatory studies "Social City Alt-Haslach" jointly for Alt-Haslach. Freiburg, 2002.
18. ^ Peter Kalchthaler: Freiburg: Wiedersehen: an architect designed the building for the municipal transport office, which was completed in 1936. Badische Zeitung, August 8, 2016, accessed on August 8, 2016 .