Karl Janisch

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Karl Janisch 1921

Karl Janisch (* 6. November 1870 in Berlin ; † 29. May 1946 in Schwegermoor ) was a German mechanical engineering - engineering , government architect and honorary citizen in Piesteritz .

Life

education

Karl Janisch was born in Berlin on November 6, 1870, the son of a laundry owner. In 1877 he attended the Realgymnasium , where he passed the Abitur exam in September 1888 with exemption from the oral exam. He then took up studies at the Technical University of Charlottenburg and completed a degree in mechanical engineering and electrical engineering . From 1889 he was a member of the Berlin fraternity "Hevellia", to which he remained loyal until the end of his life. After completing the prescribed internships, he passed the preliminary examination for mechanical engineering in 1892 and the government building supervisor examination in November 1894. His academic achievements were recognized in 1895 with a medal donated by King Friedrich Wilhelm IV . Furthermore, in 1896 he received a prize from the Prussian Minister of Public Works, with which he received recognition for the master builder examination, which he completed with distinction in July 1897 as a government master builder .

The time at Siemens

After Janisch joined the Royal Railway Directorate in Berlin as a government master builder ( assessor ), he took a leave of absence to work on operational issues for the Berlin elevated railway in the elevated and underground railway office of Siemens & Halske . Before he asked for final discharge from civil service in February 1900, he went on an eight-month study trip to the USA to study American industrial buildings.

In 1902 Siemens & Halske assigned him the department for all construction and operational issues of the Siemens group. Above all, the planning and execution of factory buildings fell into his portfolio. These were primarily determined by the use. The aesthetic category of the representative played an emphatically subordinate role. The basis of the drafts for the new production facilities was the aim of erecting functional buildings that enabled optimal and cost-effective production and that could be used flexibly and expanded when the demand changed. For the implementation of such projects, Siemens & Halske needed a specialist who, above all, had to be an engineer familiar with the production processes in order to be able to develop an effective basic concept accordingly and found his "executive arm" in the form of the mechanical engineer Karl Janisch.

The typically engineering character that distinguished Janisch's buildings and characterized them at the same time culminated in a project initiated by Georg Wilhelm von Siemens at the beginning of the 20th century. He created functional, inexpensive, socially acceptable factories that could be expanded over decades, as well as the early components of the Nonnendamm housing estate in Spandau , all of which can still be used today.

Airship hangar in Biesdorf

The airship hangar in Biesdorf is particularly characteristic of Janisch's work . From 1907 to 1911, the war and shipbuilding department of Siemens-Schuckertwerke developed a semi-rigid airship 118 m long and with a gas capacity of 13,000 m³, which for a long time was considered the fastest airship in the world at a speed of 70 km / h. Janisch's task was to design a rotating single-nave hall for Siemens-Schuckert I that could be aligned with the wind direction. This was the first steel construction of its kind in the world. A similar hall was built as a double hall in 1914/15 on the Nordholz airship field near Cuxhaven. However, the semi-rigid Siemens-Schuckert I was soon on the rigid airships of Count Zeppelin as inferior and it remained a one-off. The hall then served military purposes until 1919 and had to be dismantled in accordance with the Versailles Treaty . On the occasion of the renaming of the Spandau district Nonnendamm in Siemensstadt in 1913, Janisch received the honorary title of "building officer" for his committed work .

The time at the Bavarian nitrogen works

On February 1, 1915, Janisch moved from Siemens to the Bavarian nitrogen works , which were also based in Berlin. With the conclusion of the contract on March 5, 1915, under the direction of Janisch in Piesteritz (today part of Lutherstadt Wittenberg ), the establishment of the Piesteritz nitrogen works began . These plants were supposed to meet the needs of German agriculture for artificial fertilizers during the First World War , the principles of which were developed by the chemist Fritz Haber . In order to be able to provide living space for the considerably increased number of industrial workers, the construction of a factory settlement in Piesteritz began in 1916. As part of this development work, the architects and town planners Paul Schmitthenner and Otto Rudolf Salvisberg were recruited from Janisch to design the factory estate. A school , a kindergarten , a town hall and a department and club house were built in the residential complex so that the social needs of the residents were covered. Janisch's social commitment and his lively part earned him the greatest respect in Piesteritz. In gratitude for his work for the benefit of the community of Piesteritz, Janisch was awarded an honorary citizen on November 30, 1930 in recognition of his services to the place, in particular to the school system, the toddler school, furthermore the sending of children in need of relaxation to health resorts and many other things . Even after Janisch had said goodbye to Piesteritz, he transferred a generous donation of 1,000 Reichsmarks for children in need to the former mayor, Hans Lorbeer, on December 10, 1945  . Janisch showed a similar commitment in Garching (Upper Bavaria) in the construction of the BKW factory housing together with Salvisberg. Both were made honorary citizens by the community in 1928. The extension of the elementary school as a gift to the community was thanked by the name “Karl Janisch School”. The central square was renamed in 1950 from the designation of origin “Caro-Platz” to “Janisch-Platz”.

Gradually rising through efficiency from modest circumstances to high esteem and respectable wealth, Janisch was also a tragic victim of the Second World War . First in his magnificent Wannsee home, then bombed out in Schlachtensee , he finally fled with his wife to one of his married daughters in Elsterwerda , but was overrun by the eastern front. Then somehow he managed to make his way west. The Karl-Janisch-Weg was named after him in Berlin . Karl Janisch, who left the Bavarian nitrogen works for reasons of age in 1939, died on May 29, 1946 in Schwegermoor, which is now a district of Bohmte near Osnabrück .

Final consideration

Karl Janisch embodied the necessary connection between engineer and architect, which was required to solve the new tasks in industrial construction. On the threshold of modernity, he belongs to that generation of master builders who began to free industrial purpose-built buildings from inadequate architectural conventions, but without taking the step to an adequate new form themselves. Some of his buildings have been preserved in Berlin and could be adapted to new needs. That he initiated in Werksiedlung Piesteritz is available as a total ensemble since 1987 listed .

buildings

Before leaving the company, he created for the Siemensstadt site in Berlin:

Area of ​​the Spree site
  • The Westend cable works (later Elmowerk) in 1898/1899 with extensions in 1904/1905 and 1912, in collaboration with Carl Dihlmann and Fritz Gottlob
  • The Kabelwerk administration building in 1909
  • the expansion of the power station on Nonnendamm in 1904/05, 1911 and 1913
  • the brass foundry Nonnendamm 1899/1900 with the extension in 1907, in cooperation with Carl Dihlmann
  • Wernerwerk I (WWF) 1903–1905 with the extensions in 1907/08 and 1912
  • the small structure 1905/06 with the extensions in 1907, 1910, 1911 and 1912
  • Blockwerk I 1906 with the extensions in 1911 and 1914
  • the fire station in 1912
  • Wernerwerk II in 1914
Nonnendammallee area
  • The administration building of Siemens-Schuckertwerke (today Siemens AG Berlin ) 1909–1911 with the expansion in 1912/1913
  • the main Dynamowerk building in 1906/1907 with the extensions in 1909/1910 and 1911/1912 (11.2)
  • the heating plant in 1910
  • the iron foundry in 1907 with the expansion in 1911/1912
  • the Protos automobile plant (later a plant for electron tubes and power converters ) in 1906 with the expansions in 1908/1909 and 1911/1912
  • the chemical-physical laboratory 1906/1907
  • the railway hall in 1907/1908 with the extension in 1908/1909
Garden field area
  • The cable factory (hall complex) 1911/12 with the expansion in 1913
  • the administration building of the cable works 1911/1912

literature

  • Wolfgang Ribbe, Wolfgang Schächen : The Siemensstadt. History and architecture of an industrial site. First, Berlin 1985, ISBN 3-433-01023-4 .
  • Karl HP Bienek: Siemensstadt Lexicon. Working in Siemensstadt. ERS-Verlag, Berlin 1993, ISBN 3-928577-16-6 .
  • Joachim Jauch: Signpost to Berlin's street names. Spandau. Edition Luisenstadt, Berlin 1996.
  • Focus on Piesteritz. 3/96 SKW
  • Agnes Wolf: Karl Janisch . In: General Artist Lexicon. The visual artists of all times and peoples (AKL). Volume 77, de Gruyter, Berlin 2013, pp. 290, 291

Web links

Commons : Karl Janisch  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The Forward-Looking Planner - In the footsteps of Karl Janisch. Siemens Historical Institute, accessed June 6, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Janisch, Karl
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German mechanical engineer
DATE OF BIRTH November 6, 1870
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH May 29, 1946
Place of death Schwegermoor