Peter Maier-Asboe

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Peter Maier-Asboe , completely Hans-Peter Maier-Asboe, most recently, also on the tombstone, only Peter Maier (born June 30, 1938 ; †  December 12, 1986 ) was a German architect and artist as well as an automobile designer and bodybuilder ; in the 1960s he worked in West Berlin . By 1963 he designed a four-seat coupe based on the Auto Union 1000 S with plastic - body , which in the automotive literature and partly under the brand name Maier is guided with the year specification 1964th

Life

Sarrazinstrasse in Berlin-Friedenau (looking towards the northeast), where the architect Maier-Asboe was based from the early 1960s (house no.10 is in the background on the left)
The administration building at Sarrazinstrasse 11–15 in Berlin-Friedenau, designed by Fritz Fuß , is in the immediate vicinity of house no. 10 used by Maier-Asboe

Maier-Asboe grew up on the Ostalb in Baden-Württemberg . He studied at the State Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart and became a master student there . In the early 1960s he moved to (West) Berlin.

There he worked as an architect; One of his works is in particular a fountain he designed in the entrance hall of a school in the Lichterfelde district . At the same time, he dealt with the processing of plastics, which at that time were not that widespread. He also used this material for body construction. At the beginning of 1964 Maier-Asboe was based at Sarrazinstraße 10 in the Berlin district of Friedenau in the Tempelhof-Schöneberg district , a district with numerous buildings from the Wilhelminian era that was popular with writers and other artists at the time . In 1973 the Swiss writer Max Frisch and his wife Marianne moved into the neighboring house no. 8; his literary diary published posthumously in 2014 with the title Aus dem Berliner Journal describes events from his time there in 1973/74. From the house used by the architect Maier-Asboe, the eye falls on the building opposite, now a listed building, Sarrazinstraße 11-15 , which was built in 1939 as the administration building of the Beton- und Monierbau AG according to plans by the architects Fritz Fuß and Cornelius van der Hoeven had been erected.

At a young age, still in Aalen, Maier-Asboe went cycling . He was closely associated with the founders of the racing club "rad renn club aalen 1959" (original spelling at the time; "rrc aalen" for short), which subsequently provided several German champions ; the then unusual lower case of the club name was a suggestion of Maier-Asboe. He also designed the club logo in the then unusual colors of orange and purple.

In later years Maier-Asboe was again artistically active in a variety of ways, returned to his homeland and settled in Oberalfingen , a suburb of Aalen - Hofen . There he worked as a painter, draftsman, sculptor and designer, often also on a multimedia basis. His art tables with surfaces made of copper , aluminum or gold leaf and an acrylic resin coating, as well as relief-like wall picture collages, attracted particular attention . He applied such plastering by hand, for example, in the upper wine bar of the “Fenstergucker” restaurant in Stadelgasse 11 in Aalen. For example, in the summer of 1981 he exhibited various works under the title Peter Maier-Asboe: Painting and Sculpture in Bobenheim am Berg in Rhineland-Palatinate .

Maier-Asboe is described as restless, uncompromising and as a border crosser, but also as someone with a longing for peace, his painting and drawing style as expressive to bold. The artist died in December 1986 after a long illness at the age of only 48. It is believed that his health deteriorated because he experimented with different materials without paying attention to health risks.

Biographical material on Maier-Asboe can be found in the Geissler archive , which is kept in the Palatinate State Library in Speyer .

There is no known connection to the designer Friedrich Eugen Maier (1898–1976) and his company Leichtbau Maier in Berlin-Charlottenburg .

The Maier-Auto Union 1000 S

Technical details

The starting model for Maier-Asboe's four-seater plastic coupé from 1963/64, an Auto Union 1000 S.
An Auto Union 1000 Sp Coupé, a two-seater with an all-steel body built in series from 1958 to 1965; Maier-Asboe offered a modern four-seater alternative

Maier-Asboe designed and built a four-seater coupé body made of plastic; According to his own statements, he used polyester (apparently meaning polyester resin ) and fiberglass mats for reinforcement . Depending on the source, it was created around 1963, late 1963 or 1964. It had a modern, simple pontoon shape with a flat body and rounded hatchback . He took over the chassis and the drive (unchanged) from an Auto Union 1000 S, as it was manufactured from 1959; Accordingly, the vehicle had front-wheel drive and a three - cylinder two-stroke engine with 1.0  liter displacement and 37  kilowatts of power (50  hp ). As an alternative, the plastic body was built on the chassis of the sportier Auto Union 1000 Sp or was suitable for it, so that 40 kilowatts of power (55 hp) were available with the same displacement.

Automobile trade magazines reported several times in 1964 with a picture of the Maier-Auto Union, such as the German auto motor und sport , the Swiss Automobile Revue and the German ADAC Motorwelt . The vehicle length is given as 4.40  meters , the width as 1.65 and the height depending on the source as 1.33 or 1.3 meters, the weight of the body as (around) 150  kilograms . This made it lighter than the all-steel body of the mass-produced models. The magazine auto motor und sport emphasized a higher speed and lower fuel consumption as a result of the lower weight; the Swiss magazine Automobil Revue emphasized Maier-Asboe's objective of “building a very comfortable four-seater with extremely favorable aerodynamics .” A prototype was therefore tested from around July 1963.

In a more recent publication, the design of the Maier-Auto Union 1000 S shows similarities with the four-seater Cabriolet Thursday (DoMe 15, later Condor GT) by the designer Fritz Thursday from Frankfurt am Main , which, however, is based on the VW Type 3 . What they have in common is the aerodynamically favorable front of the vehicle as well as the advanced use of lightweight plastic as a body material. There are also parallels to the Colani GT by the German designer Luigi Colani , who was also active in Berlin at the time ; however, his model is based on the VW Beetle and only had two seats.

The Swiss automotive journalist Roger Gloor describes the Maier-Auto Union 1000 S as a “skilfully designed four-seater”, in which “the semicircular upper window closings at the front, sides and rear were noticeable.” The specialist book author Ralf JF Kieselbach assesses the design as “modern and factual ”. Characteristic design features were the unusually long front with the typical large round headlights of the AU 1000; between them it ran out flat to the front without a conventional radiator grille to a very narrow air inlet. The windshield was drawn for its time unusually far into the vehicle roof, as well as the highly curved, as panoramic window educated rear window . With the exception of the window surrounds and the door handles , Maier-Asboe did without chrome trim in the body , as did bumpers .

In the Automobil Revue of January 1964 it was explicitly stated that production should probably begin in Berlin. It is unclear whether Maier-Asboe actually produced a small (very) series or whether the vehicle remained a one-off. According to current knowledge (as of 2019), the Maier Coupé depicted in the sources and any subsequently manufactured copies have not survived to this day; the whereabouts of the original vehicle is unknown.

Classification of the vehicle concept

A DKW 3 = 6 Monza , a small series sports coupé with a plastic body from 1956 to 1958 with only two seats, one of the conceptual models for the Maier-Auto Union 1000 S from 1963/64
A Malzoni GT prepared for racing, a two-seater built in small series in Brazil from 1964 to 1966 on a shortened DKW chassis, more sporty than Maier-Asboe's design

The concept of the Maier-Auto Union 1000 S is reminiscent of various sporty models from the car manufacturer Auto Union and its DKW brand in several ways :

  • the DKW Monza , a two-seater sports coupé with a plastic body based on the DKW 3 = 6 or the Auto Union 1000; In 1956 it was built in a few copies by Dannenhauer & Stauss in Stuttgart and in 1957/58 in small series by the DKW agency Fritz Wenk in Heidelberg , so it was no longer manufactured when Maier-Asboe presented his model
  • the Auto Union 1000 Sp Coupé; the sporty two-seater with all-steel body in the style of the Ford Thunderbird of the time was offered by the factory from 1958 to 1965 for the last 10,750 D-Marks.

Occasionally, the Coupé designed by Maier-Asboe is seen as a potential successor to the AU 1000 Sp Coupé. While the latter was built until April 1965, the Maier-Auto Union was no longer seen after 1964. The reasons could have been the cessation of production of the conventional AU 1000 S model as early as July 1963, as well as the foreseeable end of the DKW and Auto Union brands as well as the two-stroke engines in large-scale car production in West Germany in 1966.

In the 1960s, other companies also followed a concept similar to Maier-Asboe with plastic coupé bodies on chassis from DKW or Auto Union:

  • the three-seater Enzmann 500 from Switzerland from 1960, which however remained a prototype with a DKW engine;
  • Coupés by the German vehicle tuner Albrecht-Wolf Mantzel based on a DKW Junior from 1962 and a DKW F 102 from 1966, which also remained prototypes;
  • Automóveis Lumimari in Brazil with the Malzoni GT (1964–1966), only two-seater and on a shortened chassis as well
  • its successor Puma GT (1966–1968), again only two-seater and on a shortened chassis.

Reception as an artist

Maier-Asboe's artistic work is honored in the book Kunstszene Ostwürttemberg , which was published on the occasion of the State Art Weeks in Aalen in 1993. Prof. Dr. Hermann Baumhauer: “With the thundery collages by Hans-Peter Maier-Asboe, the nervous restlessness of the time also became the subject of a generation irritated by pop and materialism .” As early as 1983, the archivist and local historian Karlheinz Bauer placed Maier-Asboe in line with others well-known artists active in the Aalen region such as Ernst Wanner , Karl Reich , Artur Elmer , Sieger Köder , Helmut Schuster and Fritz Nuss .

The Gmünder Tagespost headed its obituary for the artist in 1986 with the words: “He hated comfortable mediocrity.” On this occasion, the art critic Hermann Hofer came to the conclusion: “If Maier-Asboe balanced the will to create and the lack of form, images that came to Most important are what the region has to throw in uncompromising modernity. "On the occasion of Maier-Asboe's 70th birthday in 2008, 22 years after his death, the art critic Wolfgang Nussbaumer summed up:" He was a young savage, who created his very own Pop Art . In doing so, he often overshot the target in exuberant vitality. But when he found his inner balance, he created works that one still stands in front of in amazement today. "

literature

  • Roger Gloor: All cars from the 1960s . Motorbuch Verlag, Stuttgart. 1st edition 2006. ISBN 978-3-613-02649-0 , pp. 392 and 405.
  • Marian Suman-Hreblay: Automobile Manufacturers Worldwide Registry . McFarland Books, Jefferson, North Carolina, United States, 2015, ISBN 978-0-786-40972-3 , p. 184 (English).
  • Ralf JF Kieselbach: Technique of Elegance - The history of automobile design in Germany up to 1965 using the example of Auto Union and its predecessor companies . Nicolaische Verlagsbuchhandlung , Berlin 1999, ISBN 978-3-875-84864-9 , p. 194 f.
  • Wolfgang Nussbaumer: In memoriam: Peter Maier-Asboe , in: Gmünder Tagespost , July 1st, 2008 (on the occasion of the 70th birthday the day before).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k Wolfgang Nußbaumer: In memoriam: Peter Maier-Asboe , in: Gmünder Tagespost , July 1, 2008 (on the occasion of the 70th birthday the day before).
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j Roger Gloor: All cars of the 60s. 1st edition. Motorbuch Verlag, Stuttgart 2006, ISBN 978-3-613-02649-0 , p. 392.
  3. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k Ralf JF Kieselbach: Technique of Elegance - The history of automobile design in Germany up to 1965 using the example of Auto Union and its predecessor companies . Nicolaische Verlagsbuchhandlung , Berlin 1999, ISBN 978-3-875-84864-9 , p. 194 f.
  4. ↑ Roger Gloor: All Cars of the 60s. 1st edition. Motorbuch Verlag, Stuttgart 2006, ISBN 978-3-613-02649-0 , p. 405.
  5. ^ A b c d Marian Suman-Hreblay: Automobile Manufacturers Worldwide Registry . McFarland Books, Jefferson, North Carolina, United States, 2015, ISBN 978-0-786-40972-3 , p. 184 (English).
  6. ↑ a b c d e f g h i Peter Maier-Asboe, NN (editor): Plastic body from Berlin (editorially edited letter to the editor, two columns), in: Automobil Revue (magazine), No. 2/1964 of January 16, 1964, P. 14 (section “Letters from readers to AR”) with picture.
  7. ↑ Helmut Banschbach: Olympic champion at the cycling festival "50 years of rrc-aalen" on November 14, 2009 on the web portal of the Aalen Rad-Renn-Club , accessed on May 24, 2019 (incorrectly called Mayer-Asboe).
  8. ↑ a b rad renn club aalen 1959 eV: 50 years rrc-aalen (Festschrift), Aalen 2009, PDF , accessed on May 26, 2019 (there incorrectly as Mayer-Asboe).
  9. ↑ NN: For a while, many guests from outside Germany - Aalen Economic Stories (69) - Der "Fenstergucker" , in: Schwäbische Post , September 12, 2008 (there incorrectly as Mayer-Asboe).
  10. ↑ Two -page exhibition and invitation brochure for the exhibition Peter Maier-Asboe: Painting and sculpture in the art and auction house Willi FG Heisser in Bobenheim am Berg from June 21 to July 12, 1981, archived and accessible in the Geissler archive in the State Library Center / in the Palatinate State Library Speyer.
  11. ↑ Ursula Biffar: The grip beyond the concrete - exhibition Peter Maier-Asboe, Bobenheim am Berg , in: Die Rheinpfalz / Mittelhaardter Rundschau (daily newspaper) of July 3, 1981.
  12. ↑ Peter Maier-Asboe in the Geissler archive of the Palatinate State Library in Speyer (alphabetical list of artists under "M") , accessed on May 7, 2019.
  13. ↑ a b c d e f g Peter Maier-Asboe, NN (editor): Eigenbau (editorially edited letter to the editor), in: auto motor und sport (magazine), No. 7/1964, p. 12 (section "Letters") with picture.
  14. ↑ Peter Maier-Asboe, NN (editor): editorially edited letter to the editor, in: ADAC Motorwelt No. 2 of February 1, 1964, p. 34 (section “Reader forum of the motor world”) with picture.
  15. ^ Hermann Baumhauer: Kunstszene Ostwürttemberg , ed. by the city of Aalen on the occasion of the State Art Weeks 1993. Konrad Theiss Verlag, Stuttgart 1993. ISBN 3-8062-1108-6 , p. 99.
  16. ^ Karlheinz Bauer: Aalen: History and culture between Welland and Härtsfeld . Konrad Theiss Verlag, Stuttgart 1983. ISBN 3-8062-0321-0 , p. 172.

annotation

  1. ↑ In contrast to other brands or models, where Gloor expressly speaks of a (small) series model or a single item or a design study, depending on the case, he avoids making a clear statement in this case: “The Berlin architect Peter had a similar styling Maier- Asboe was chosen for his plastic coupé based on the Auto Union 1000 S, which appeared around the same time [end of 1963]. … ”(Page 392). “Appeared” as a distinction to the mere “presented” can be understood as an indication of a small series production. In the “Name Register” from page 402, Gloor does not use the name “Maier” under the “lead letter D” for “single item / dream car” or “M” for “model / model range”, but as a person with the “lead letter C” for “body manufacturer / designer ". Kieselbach does not commit itself to the scope of production either. Suman-Hreblay speaks of a “plastic bodied coupé”; in other places he uses similar formulations, sometimes to emphasize that only one vehicle model was produced, sometimes for cases where it was a single piece.
personal data
SURNAME Maier-Asboe, Peter
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Maier, Peter; Maier-Asboe, Hans-Peter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German architect, artist, vehicle designer and coachbuilder
DATE OF BIRTH June 30, 1938
DATE OF DEATH December 12, 1986