Paul Wolf (architect)

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Paul Wolf (born November 21, 1879 in Schrozberg ; † April 30, 1957 in Leonberg ) was a German architect and town planner . He was initially employed in Hanover for a long time from 1914 . However, the years 1922 to 1945, in which he held the office of City Planning Council of Dresden , are considered to be his main creative phase.

Life

Paul Wolf studied architecture at the Technical University of Stuttgart with Theodor Fischer and Paul Bonatz . During his studies he became a member of the Ulmia Stuttgart fraternity in 1897 . In 1906 and 1907 he was employed as a city planner in Katowice , after which he carried out the same activity in Wilhelmshaven until 1910 . He then became a board member of the Berlin-Schöneberg urban expansion office in the rank of urban planning inspector .

In 1914, Paul Wolf was elected as the successor to Carl Wolff to the City Planning Officer for Building Construction and Senator in Hanover. For the city he created a general development plan with integrated green space planning, which was very progressive for the standards of the time. He also planned exemplary residential settlements , which were among the first of its kind in Hanover. For example, the small housing estate "Red Houses" in Hanover-Vinnhorst was realized .

From 1922 until 1945, Paul Wolf was city planning officer for building construction and urban renewal in Dresden. He became the successor to Hans Poelzig (1916–1920). Wolf was both in the Weimar Republic and the Nazi Germany de facto as a department head in charge of urban planning in Dresden. During this time he created several buildings, some of which shaped the cityscape, as well as general urban planning and wrote several books on the subjects of urban planning and urban development . In 1928 he received an honorary doctorate from the Technical University of Dresden , having already become an honorary senator there two years earlier.

After the Second World War he was employed as a consultant for urban planning at the GDR Ministry for Development in East Berlin until 1952 . Five years later he died in his home in Württemberg .

Paul Wolf was not a theorist or design pioneer, but rather spread the modernity of the 1920s and 1930s in a moderate form and created numerous quite significant buildings in the process.

Stylistic career

The architect Paul Wolf, whose period of activity extended from the German Empire to the early GDR period, was active in several completely opposite epochs. His studies and his first employment fell into the late phase of historicism . He showed particular interest in regional construction methods. However, he turned to the modern early on.

The model of his planning was initially the ideas of Raymond Unwin , who had realized the world's first garden city Letchworth around 1903 . However, Wolf was increasingly criticized by his colleagues for sticking to pitched roofs and brick architecture for a long time in his main field of activity, residential construction, and not finding a supraregional and completely modern design language.

Around 1930 Paul Wolf turned to row development in cities. In the course of time, more and more features of the New Building were incorporated into his designs. His actions were increasingly shaped by a function and user-oriented way of thinking. From then on he was significantly involved in major municipal projects, such as the construction of swimming pools , schools , hospitals and power plants .

Wolf described himself as apolitical and remained in office during the time of National Socialism , of course not without being able to evade its guidelines for a new architectural image. Wolf became a member of the NSDAP in the summer of 1933 . Between 1935 and 1939 he also worked on the plans for the Dresden Gauforum on Güntzwiesen and contributed his own designs. In this context, Paul Wolf also developed a redesign plan for Dresden's city center, which, however, was also not implemented due to the war.

In the early post-war period , he developed a radical new design for the Dresden city center, which was largely destroyed after the air raids . After that, it would have been crisscrossed by streets sealed off with long apartment blocks, which would have resembled Berliner Strasse in Frankfurt am Main or Chemnitzer Strasse der Nations . This plan was also not implemented to the extent originally intended.

Work (selection)

Before 1923

Model construction in the Cecilien Gardens in Berlin-Schöneberg designed by Wolf in the early 1920s
The "Red Houses" in Hanover-Hainholz
Former Dresden Youth Hostel , later the Hotel Astoria, 1951
The grave of honor designed by Paul Wolf for General Otto von Emmich in the Hanover-Engesohde cemetery

Dresden years

Fonts

literature

Web links

Commons : Paul Wolf  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Honorary doctoral students of the TH / TU Dresden. Technical University of Dresden, accessed on January 27, 2015 .
personal data
SURNAME Wolf, Paul
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German architect and urban planner
DATE OF BIRTH November 21, 1879
PLACE OF BIRTH Schrozberg
DATE OF DEATH April 30, 1957
Place of death Leonberg