Manfred Prasser

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Prasser's most famous work: The great hall in the Palace of the Republic

Manfred Prasser (born July 12, 1932 in Chemnitz ; † March 20, 2018 ) was a German architect and engineer . Among other things, he was involved in the construction of the Palace of the Republic , the Friedrichstadt-Palast and the reconstruction of the Schauspielhaus to the Konzerthaus Berlin .

Life

Prasser spent the first years of his life in Kuhschnappel in the Saxon governing body of Glauchau . After attending school, Prasser completed an apprenticeship as a carpenter and successfully completed it in 1952, after which he studied at the technical colleges in Chemnitz . In the same year he switched to the technical college for construction in Görlitz . After graduating as a civil engineer in 1954, he worked for the municipal administration in Görlitz. In 1955 he went to the NVA in Cottbus, before joining the central design and construction office of the Ministry for National Defense as an architect from 1956 to 1960 . From 1960 to 1990 he was an architect at VEB Berlinprojekt , a state-owned collective of architects. During this time he was involved in some important reconstruction work, new buildings and conversions, especially in what was then East Berlin :

  • First intensive collaboration at Leipzig-Halle Airport under the direction of construction officer Erhardt Gißke .
  • 1964: When a former allotment garden in Storkower Strasse was redesigned into a commercial complex between 1962 and 1966 , many city planners and architect collectives were involved. With the cooperation of J. Härter and under Prasser's direction, six to eight-storey office buildings including operational and social facilities, an ambulance and four company restaurants were built.
  • 1967: The reconstruction of the Jungfernbrücke and the construction of new residential buildings along the Friedrichsgracht were planned and carried out by the collective Heinz Graffunder and Manfred Prasser. The apartment buildings in prefabricated construction represent an object with tiny apartments, the design of which is based on central aisle houses and whose loggias are highlighted by strong colors and structures.
  • The construction and implementation plans for the hexagonal large hall of the Palace of the Republic came from Manfred Prasser. He integrated height-adjustable ceilings, swiveling parquet, sliding walls and cubic panoramas into the hall. For this achievement he received the National Prize of the GDR in 1976 . The stage technology was unique in the world for its time, as can be seen from the assessment of the design by the building combine: "This is world sensation, but even America cannot build that". The GDR government awarded him the national prize for this work .
  • From 1979 to 1984 Prasser was jointly responsible for the reconstruction of the theater in Berlin . He enforced that the interior, which was actually supposed to be designed in a modern style, was built in a classicist style .
    When it came to the fundamental design issues, the then Minister of Culture, Hans-Joachim Hoffmann , had to overcome the idea that the building should be rebuilt according to Schinkel's old plans. Prasser came up with a committed opinion: “If we don't manage to make something of our own, unmistakable, that can only be found here and where we are not afraid of the courage to dare something new that is actually the old, in short : if we conform to contemporary tastes - then, dear Minister, you can build your GDR here yourself, without me! ”The minister was convinced and Prasser was able to implement his own ideas. In 1984 he again received the national prize for the completely new building of the theater.
  • After the GDR government had decided to build the new Friedrichstadtpalast , the architects of the Berlin project under the leadership of Prasser were busy with the planning and construction, which lasted from 1980 to 1984. Prasser himself judged his plans as follows: “I'm not building a Larifari shed here, of which people say: Look, this is the petty GDR”. In order to be able to take into account the artistic and artistic requirements for the new building as well as possible, a small group studied the revue theater in Paris with Gißke, Prasser and the then director of the Friedrichstadt-Palast, Wolfgang E. Struck .
  • The Grand Hotel on Friedrichstrasse , completed in 1987, goes back to plans by Manfred Prasser, as does the Domhotel (after 1990 Hilton Berlin ) on the Akademie Platz , which was also inaugurated in 1987 . For these hotel buildings he was awarded the Schinkel Prize in 1986 and a year later the Goethe Prize of the City of Berlin .
  • The Friedrichstadt Passages were the last major project. In the mid-1980s, construction began on the three-block shopping and entertainment complex on Friedrichstrasse - today the location of Quarters 205 , 206 and 207 . The opening was planned in 1992, but after reunification there was a construction freeze and the shell was demolished in 1991.

From 1990 Manfred Prasser ran his own architecture office in Berlin. And he also planned and implemented his own family house made of wood in Oranienburg district of Zehlendorf . Here he lived the last years of his life.

Manfred Prasser died on March 20, 2018 in a hospital, as his son announced to the public on March 24.

reception

Overall, Prasser was hardly known as an architect during his active time outside the architectural community, his buildings very well. An obituary notice on his death says: "With his Great Hall in the Palace of the Republic he had created a unique architectural treasure - a symbiosis of technology, color and light."

Multifunctional hexagonal large hall in the Palace of the Republic when it was demolished (2006)

Regarding the demolition of the palace, which Prasser witnessed, he took the view that this was nonsensical in terms of urban planning, but it was a matter of “tough communist hatred” and, in a sense, a return coach to Ulbricht's demolition of the Berlin Palace . Prasser had a very ambivalent relationship with the designer of the castle reconstruction, Franco Stella , as the following statement shows: “I have nothing against architects who want to build something new. But you can't build a Potemkin facade with a reinforced concrete skeleton behind it. Such a castle is sociopolitical and historical, sorry, shit. If historically, then correctly ”.

Prasser also had to watch the demolition of the Friedrichstadtpassagen from his office window, but did not comment publicly.

literature

Web links

Commons : Great Hall, Palace of the Republic  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Lothar Heinke : Lord of the huts and palaces . In: Der Tagesspiegel , July 12, 2012.
  2. ^ Joachim Schulz, Werner Graebner: Berlin. Capital of the DDR. Architecture guide GDR. VEB Verlag für Bauwesen, Berlin 1974; P. 110, object no. 171.
  3. ^ Joachim Schulz, Werner Graebner: Berlin. Capital of the DDR. Architecture guide GDR. VEB Verlag für Bauwesen, Berlin 1974; P. 80, object no. 112.
  4. ↑ a b Oranienburger Generalanzeiger , July 12, 2012.
  5. ↑ a b c d Florian Thalmann: Lord of the stones . In: Berliner Zeitung , March 26, 2018 (print edition), p. 12.
  6. ↑ Florian Urban: Berlin / GDR neo-historical . Gbr. Mann Verlag, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-7861-2544-0 , pp. 172 ff .
  7. ^ GDR architect Manfred Prasser has died . orf.at , March 24, 2018.
  8. ^ Tilman Steffens: Palace architect Manfred Prasser: "The Germans always let their hatred out on stones". In: Zeit Online . June 13, 2015, accessed April 4, 2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Prasser, Manfred
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German architect and engineer
DATE OF BIRTH July 12, 1932
PLACE OF BIRTH Chemnitz , Saxony
DATE OF DEATH 20th March 2018