Otto Zollinger

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Otto Zollinger (born May 6, 1886 in Fällanden ; † April 22, 1970 in Zurich- Adliswil) was a Swiss architect who worked in Saarbrücken from 1924 to 1944 .

Life

Zollinger was born out of wedlock to a seamstress and lost his mother at an early age. He was raised by the pastor of his home village. In 1903 he began an apprenticeship in the renowned Zurich architecture firm Chiodera and Tschudy ; since he had no other, in particular no academic, training, he later described himself as an autodidact .

Zollinger started his own business in Zurich at the age of 24; he was not only active as an architect, but also as an interior and furniture designer and occasionally as a stage designer. In 1920 he became a member of the Swiss Werkbund .

In the years after the First World War , the Swiss economy stagnated and there was a lack of construction contracts. Zollinger himself described it as a coincidence that his attention during this time fell on the Saar area , which was separated from the German Empire for 15 years after the war and administered by the League of Nations . The first smaller orders were followed by others, and in 1924 he opened his architecture office in Saarbrücken .

Zollinger's architecture developed from the expressionist tendencies that prevailed up to the second half of the 1920s to a moderate modernity in the sense of New Building , and his designs sometimes also approached the radical line of the Bauhaus .

When the Saar area was reintegrated into the German Reich after the referendum in 1935, Zollinger faced several problems: As a Swiss citizen, he was a foreigner, could not provide an “ Aryan certificate ” (in the sense of the National Socialist racial ideology) because of his illegitimate birth , and entertained both private and business life Relationships in politically unpopular circles - and its architecture did not correspond to the cultural ideals . Nevertheless, for a long time he hesitated to return to Switzerland and despite these problems - and even during the Second World War - found a job. It was not until December 1944 that he moved his office to Zurich and worked there as a freelancer for several years. Zollinger designed the Mövenpick restaurants with their long counters with swivel chairs in Zurich's Claridenhof (1948), in Lucerne (1952), Bern (1953) and Geneva (1959) for Ueli Prager .

buildings

(Selection)

Fonts

  • The building in the landscape. Work by the architect Otto Zollinger - Saarbrücken . In: Innen-Dekor , Vol. 43, 1932, pp. 86–95 ( digital copy ).

literature

  • Marlen Dittmann: Otto Zollinger. A Swiss architect in the Saar area 1924–1944. (= Monographs on the art and cultural history of the Saar region, vol. 6.) Edition Europa, Walsheim 1999, ISBN 3-931773-20-5 .

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ Otto Zollinger was not related to the German architect Friedrich Zollinger (1880–1945).
personal data
SURNAME Zollinger, Otto
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss architect
DATE OF BIRTH May 6, 1886
PLACE OF BIRTH Fällanden
DATE OF DEATH April 22, 1970
Place of death Zurich