Otto Lasius

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Ernst Friedrich Otto Lasius (born October 4, 1797 in Hanover , † March 4, 1888 in Oldenburg (Oldb) ) was a German architect and chief construction director of the Grand Duchy of Oldenburg .

Life

Lasius was a son of the surveyor Georg Siegmund Otto Lasius (1752-1833). He first grew up in Hanover and from 1809 attended the old grammar school in Oldenburg. At the age of seventeen he joined the Oldenburg military contingent that was newly established in 1813 and in the summer of 1815 took part in the fortress war in the Franco-German border area and in the battles of Mézières near Sedan and Montmédy . After the regiment returned, he and his company were transferred to Jever and in 1816 to Rastede . There he worked under Heinrich Carl Slevogt on the classical renovation of the palace . In 1818 Lasius was assigned to the surveying office and in 1820 he was given leave of absence to study architecture at the University of Göttingen in order to acquire the theoretical foundations of his profession. In 1822 he returned to Oldenburg and was initially commissioned with dike construction work in Fedderwarden . In 1823 he was transferred to Jever as a construction manager, where, under Slevogt, he worked on the expansion of the newly founded seaside resort of Wangerooge . In 1831 he worked as a chamber assessor and from 1838 as a building and court counselor in Oldenburg. In 1857 he became head of that time for the first time in the areas of construction and civil engineering separate building administration of the Grand Duchy. In 1868 he was promoted to senior construction director. In 1874, at the age of 77, he retired.

Work in the Oldenburg building administration

Lasius was a member of the commission of the Peter Friedrich Ludwigs Hospital from 1842 and, along with Heinrich Strack , the court architect in Oldenburg, played a major role in the construction of this building, which was central to Oldenburg classicism. He also worked on the library in Oldenburg, which was built in 1846 and designed by Hero Diedrich Hillerns . Only a few buildings have survived from Lasius himself, but his influence was significant due to his position as the chief building officer and the reports and drafts he prepared.

Telegraph in Brake - Maritime Museum of the Oldenburg Weser ports

Only the telegraph in Brake from 1846 has survived as one of the few secured works by him - the tower-like brick building was part of the optical telegraph line between Bremen and Bremerhaven and has housed the shipping museum of the Oldenburg Lower Weser since 1960 . With its arches, the building is based on the Munich school at the same time and, in its brick material, on the functionalism of the late Schinkel .

Furthermore, Lasius published a variety of house studies and urban planning writings. With the fundamental treatise The Frisian farmhouse in its development during the last four centuries, preferably in the coastal area between the Weser and the Dollart (1885), he became the initiator of the Gulfhaus research , as he was the first to understand this type of house in terms of floor plan, construction and economy as well as scale Described drawings and perspective sketches. Lasius had already dealt with the topographical and historical development of Oldenburg in 1845 for the five-hundredth anniversary of the city of Oldenburg. In 1853 he also wrote a memorandum on the future urban design of Oldenburg, in which he made a variety of suggestions for the construction of a train station and a horse-drawn tram, for the port expansion and for better utilization of the existing building land with the aim of rounding off the extensive development. As for many architects of his time, a trip to Italy became a central educational experience for him. He conveyed his impressions to his students Hugo and Adolf Slevogt as well as to the painter Arthur Fitger . The Deutsche Bauzeitung also mentions in Lasius' obituary his services to the restoration of the Edo-Wiemken monument in the city church of Jever. With this monument preservation measure, he was also considered the father of the Oldenburg heritage preservation .

Further commitment

During the pre-March period , Lasius, like many other members of the educated middle class, was involved in the slowly emerging national movement by being involved in associations and all-German assemblies. Since 1832 he was a member of the Oldenburg Literary Society , in 1839 he was one of the founders of the trade association and the literary-sociable association in which the reform-minded and liberal forces of Oldenburg gathered. In 1839 he took part in the all-German gathering of naturalists in Pyrmont . In 1848 he was a member of a federal commission to establish uniform weights and measures and in 1860 and 1862 he took part in the all-German architects' meetings in Frankfurt and Hanover. Despite these various activities, Lasius remained rather apolitical.

Lasius was in contact with Henry Dunant by letter from October 1863 . He responded to the invitation to the first Geneva Conference in 1863 in Geneva . In a letter dated October 20, 1863, he informed Dunant that the Oldenburg government “fully recognizes the extraordinary importance of the assembly's objectives in the interests of humanity.” He also reports that the government “has not yet been able to form a sufficiently precise idea how the desired goal can be achieved ”. He later reported to Dunant on the work of the Association for the Care of Wounded Warriors, founded in January 1864, for the benefit of the wounded soldiers of the German-Danish War . On March 21, 1865, he gave a lecture in Oldenburg on the establishment of the new associations for the care of wounded warriors and the experiences that these associations had already made during the German-Danish War.

family

Lasius was married to Henriette Juliane geb. Baylon (1802–1855), the daughter of a factory owner from Lake Geneva . She came to Oldenburg in 1826 as an educator for the daughters of Hereditary Prince Paul Friedrich August of Oldenburg . The architect Georg Lasius (1835–1928) was among the couple's children .

Fonts

  • About the shape of the mouth of the Weser three hundred years ago. Published in: Oldenburgische Blätter, No. 12–15. 1824.
  • Oldenburg in the time of our fathers. Oldenburg 1845.
  • Investigations into the peat bogs. Without location information. 1849.
  • Look past and future in the city of Oldenburg. Oldenburg. 1853.
  • German proposals for a uniform system of measurement. Oldenburg. 1861.
  • Declaration by the Oldenburg Trade and Industry Association regarding the German gold coin. Oldenburg. 1864.
  • The associations for the care of wounded warriors - a lecture about the Geneva Congress of 1863/64 and the experiences from the Schleswig and North American wars. Oldenburg. 1865.
  • Wangerooge and its navigation marks. Published in: Journal of the Hannover Architects and Engineers Association, 13th year 1867.
  • The metric system of measurements for domestic use in Oldenburg is explained. Oldenburg. 1872.
  • The ruins of the Hude monastery. Published in: OJb, 2, 1879. pp. 17-27.
  • The Frisian farmhouse in its development during the last four centuries, preferably in the coastal area between the Weser and the Dollart. Edition with 38 woodcuts. Strasbourg. 1885.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Letter from Otto Lasius to Henry Dunant, October 20, 1863. Translation in the archive of the DRK regional association in Oldenburg
  2. ^ Letter from Otto Lasius to Henry Dunant, April 18, 1864. Translation in the archive of the DRK regional association in Oldenburg
  3. ^ The associations for the care of wounded warriors - a lecture on the Geneva Congress of 1863/64 and the experiences from the Schleswig and North American wars. Oldenburg 1865.
personal data
SURNAME Lasius, Otto
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Lasius, Ernst Friedrich Otto (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German senior construction director
DATE OF BIRTH October 4, 1797
PLACE OF BIRTH Hanover
DATE OF DEATH March 4, 1888
Place of death Oldenburg (Oldb)