Leon Frejtag

Leonard Dominik Frejtag (born November 6, 1862 in Warsaw ; † October 16, 1927 in Hamburg ) was an architect from Poland who worked in Germany .

Live and act

The Australhaus

Leon Frejtag came from a Jewish family whose background is largely unknown. He studied architecture at the Technical University of Dresden and went to Hamburg in the early 1890s, probably because of the flourishing economy. As a freelance architect, in 1894/1895 he planned apartment buildings on the plots at Rothestrasse 53–57 and in 1897/1898 in Bäckerbreitgang 5–7. In doing so, he was guided by eclecticism , which was the leading architectural style until the turn of the century. In 1900 he founded the Frejtag & Wurzbach office with Hermann Wurzbach , which developed into one of the leading Hamburg law firms.

In 1903/1904 Frejtag and Wurzbach planned the Australhaus , an office building for the first time , in which they also housed their own office. In doing so, they did not decorate the facades, as was customary at the time, but with bluish-green glazed facing bricks and striking plastic pillars. With this new architectural style, they shaped office buildings that were built in the period that followed. In particular, the glazed bricks, which were called “grès flammés”, were considered a trademark of Frejtag & Wurzbach . After the Australhaus, the architects built the Kontorhaus Newman on Schauenburgerstrasse from 1906 to 1911, the Flüggerhaus on Rödingsmarkt in 1907/1908 and the Gertig House on Großer Burstah in 1904/1905, which existed until 1970.

After Hermann Wurzbach's death in 1905, Frejtag accepted Erich Elingius , who had worked for the firm since 1904, as a new partner in 1908 . In 1910 he renamed the office Frejtag & Elingius . With the economic downturn caused by the First World War , Frejtag's work as an architect ended. Erich Elingius continued to run the office alone and took over Gottfried Schramm as a new business partner in 1924 . An architecture office that is still known today developed from this.

Leon Frejtag died in October 1927. His grave is in the Ohlsdorf cemetery .

literature

• Jan Lubitz: Frejtag, Leon . In: Franklin Kopitzsch, Dirk Brietzke (Hrsg.): Hamburgische Biographie . tape 6 . Wallstein, Göttingen 2012, ISBN 978-3-8353-1025-4 , p. 97-99 .