Paul Held (architect)

Alte Post Davos Sgraffito 1939

Malans, City Hall, sgraffito 1930

Alte Post Davos, sgraffito by Paul Held 1939

Davos Laret school building (1953) demolished

Paul Held (born June 27, 1891 in Seewis-Pardisla ; † February 11, 1953 in Chur ) was a Swiss architect and graphic artist .

Years of apprenticeship

Paul Held was born as the son of a teacher in Seewis-Pardisla and attended schools in Seewis, Tamins and Schiers . The family's move to Zurich in 1909 gave the 18-year-old the opportunity to take the entrance exam at the Zurich School of Applied Arts , which he passed thanks to his talent for drawing. Held attended the decorative painting class, which he successfully completed in 1912.

A three-year employment with the architects Schäfer and Risch in Chur led Held to architecture. During the construction of the square school building in Chur, he played a key role in the design of the interior furnishings. The paintings on the central pavilion, but also the pictorial design of the auditorium with its ceiling painting, the allegorical depiction of a young woman against a cosmic background, are works by Paul Held. The 21-year-old was equally interested in the design work on the drawing board and the execution of decorations on the building, and the collaboration on this important work of the Swiss homeland style formed the basis for his further artistic development.

Studios in Zurich and Malans

In the years that followed, he ran a studio in Zurich as an architect and graphic designer. Initially, projects were developed with the architect Walter Gachnang , and later on, we created our own competition projects for public buildings, which are kept in a classical language of form. The meticulous plans and perspectives are preserved in the estate. The project for a church in Arbon was a concise design that was not carried out. The design for a cigarette advertisement ('Mont Blanc', 1916) is an elegant piece of work in the style of Swiss poster graphics. The works of Paul Held from this period show that the cultural production, even of the craft-oriented designers, moved undeterred by the war in the direction of modernity.

The move to the farming and wine-growing village of Malans in 1923 with his wife Berta Graf and his two young sons Paul and Johann Ulrich was the beginning of an eventful career for Paul Held. Architectural projects and buildings, graphic orders, architectural decorations and furniture were created in Malans and in the wider area. Even small jobs like the design of wine labels were carried out with meticulousness. Between 1924 and 1926, Held created gold print labels for three local wine producers for Completer , which elegantly represented the exclusive white wine. The unity of image and writing is derived from classic letterpress printing .

Held sometimes drew directly on the stone at the printer; so the poster 'Flugtag Chur 1923', a lithograph in monotone (poster collection Swiss Museum of Transport , Lucerne). The drawing shows the design features typical of Held's work in the twenties: the planes are bird-like, animated phenomena, the construction of the apparatus is interpreted architecturally and ornamentally.

Architect and draftsman in Malans

From 1923 to the end of the decade, Held was able to realize around ten buildings and conversions as an architect in Malans. The facade designs and the original interior parts of the only partially preserved Kaufmann-Salis house (1928, residential building with assembly room) show the understanding of tradition and the simple craftsmanship of Heinrich Tessenow's reformed German architecture . At the end of six years of exploring local architecture, there is the 'Im Michel' house (1929), which has remained unchanged to this day. Inside, this work also shows the independent creative power of Paul Held, which differs little from the regional home style of the leading Graubünden architect Nicolaus Hartmann jun. touches shows. The outbreak of the Great Depression in the autumn of 1929 ended most private construction projects.

Paul Held intensified his activities as a graphic artist and picture designer. At the beginning of the new decade there was an order for a mural on Davos Town Hall (1929–30). This historic building was radically reinterpreted by the Davos architect Rudolf Gaberel . The resulting unadorned flat roof building, a pioneer building of modern architecture in the Alps, symbolized progressive Davos, but called for a facade decor with which the town hall could be anchored in the village image. The 1974 improperly renewed fresco-secco handhelds based on the artistic ancestors Hans Ardüser , and documented helds awakening interest in the traditional images of the local cultural and art history that is documented in the estate in the form of a crest and house signs collection and a collection of photos.

During this time, new professional and personal contacts arose, for example with Rudolf Gaberel or the Bernese sculptor Erwin Friedrich Baumann , who temporarily lived in Davos. Starting in 1931, Paul Held drew small posters, cover pictures for maps or guides and advertising graphics for daily newspapers for the Graubünden Tourist Office. The residential and commercial buildings that were built from 1932 onwards now showed a more rigid architectural language that stood between the Davos modernism of Rudolf Gaberel and the Spartan wooden buildings of Paul Artaria . They are characterized by an extremely economical use of building materials. Inside, these houses reveal a cheerful, homely atmosphere with their colored paneling rooms and lovingly designed stairs.

Move to Davos

Before the start of the Second World War, Paul Held relocated to Davos. The reason was the realization of the large facade graffiti at the post office at the time, an order that arose from a competition led by Augusto Giacometti . The depiction, which is not very pathetic in comparison with the pictorial works of the 1939 state exhibition, relates to the imagery of the postage stamp , the ornaments of traditional Graubünden building culture and the classicist sgraffito art . The pictorial work in place shows the history of the post office and travel from its beginnings to the present in a thoroughly humorous way, as it begins as slow snail mail, followed by the leisurely courier and the stressed stagecoach. Only the steam locomotive brings the man from the world to Davos, where the much faster pilot with his flying machine is already waiting.

In the post-war period, Held built residential houses, residential buildings and public buildings in Davos. From 1946 the future designer Hans Gugelot worked for Held at times. Paul Held died on February 11, 1953 in Chur.

Sources, literature

• Competition for the Graubünden Tourist Office. In: The work. Issue 12, 1918, p. 10.
• Competition for a reformed church in Arbon In: Schweizerische Bauzeitung. Vol 77/78, pp. 70-72.
• Paul Held: Directory of the house symbols of the Canton of Graubünden. State Archives Chur, SAGR B 780/2.
• M. Casutt: The square school in Chur. In: Bündner monthly newspaper. 1/1994, p. 39.
• Jacqueline Bohusch: From the old to the new post. In: Davos Revue. No. 4/1998, p. 11.
• Leza Dosch: Graubünden building directory. (No. 301, Davos Town Hall), Chur 2002.
• Leza Dosch: Buildings on the Albula and Bernina lines. RhB Chur 2007, p. 13.
• Felix Held: Paul Held-seen again. In: Bündner Jahrbuch. Chur 2010.