Richard Kauffmann

Richard Kauffmann in the 1950s

Richard Kauffmann , Hebrew ריכרד קאופמן(* June 20, 1887 in Frankfurt am Main ; † February 3, 1958 in Jerusalem ), was a German architect who emigrated to Palestine in 1920 , where he distinguished himself as an architect, settlement and urban planner. He belonged to a group of architects who adapted the principles of the Bauhaus for the Levantine landscape and thus laid the architectural basis for the emerging state of Israel . He was a planner of Moschavs Nahalal and the neighborhood White City in Tel Aviv known.

Life

Richard Isaak Kauffmann was born in Frankfurt am Main in 1887 as the son of the businessman Heinrich Isaak and his wife Helene, b. White lead, born. As a teenager, Kauffmann founded and headed a local group of the Zionist Blue and White Association in Frankfurt , a wandering bird movement of Jewish youth . First he learned painting at the Städel Art School in Frankfurt am Main. But at the urging of his father, he chose an education that promised more of a middle-class existence. From 1907 he studied architecture at the Technical University of Darmstadt . In the following year he moved to Amsterdam , before he went to the Technical University of Munich in 1909 , where he took a new subject in urban planning with Theodor Fischer . Other of his teachers were Paul Pfann , Heinrich von Schmidt and Friedrich von Thiersch . He also painted landscapes in Hans von Hayek's studio in Dachau .

He finished his studies in Munich in 1912 . He gained his first practical experience with Georg Metzendorf in Essen , who at that time built the garden city Hüttenau, the first garden suburb based on Ebenezer Howard's ideas in Germany. In 1914 he opened his own architecture office in Frankfurt, but was drafted into military service as early as 1915.

During the First World War , Kauffmann initially served on the western front near Verdun , but was later relocated to the eastern front. In Volhynian Kovel he experienced in 1917 for the first time a shtetl . Kauffmann was impressed by the self-evident Jewish awareness of its residents. During the war he made friends with the Zionists Fritz Kornberg and Fritz Fischl , whom he met while on duty. Under the impression of the living conditions in the shtetl, Kauffmann took part in a competition for a development plan for the garden city Raigorod near Kharkov , which at that time was under the command of the entire German armed forces in the east , where he won first prize.

Demobilized after the war, he took up a position at a leading architecture firm in Christiania , which he had chosen among 50 applicants. Kauffmann experienced the period in Norway as the time of his professional maturity. He participated in major architectural and urban planning projects in Christiania, Bergen and Stavanger and won recognition and awards. But he turned down an offer to join the company as a partner.

Arthur Ruppin , who headed the Palestine Office created in 1908 (המשרד הארצישראלי; later Sochnut (הסוכנות) ) in Jaffa and whose acquaintance Kauffmann had made in 1919, offered him the management of the planning office of the Central Office for Settlement Matters founded in Jerusalem (in British times: Palestine Land Development Company; Hebrew הכשרת הישוב) at the Palestine Office. In August 1920, Kauffmann immigrated to Palestine - as part of the Third Aliyah - and took on the leading position in Jerusalem.

There he opened his own architecture office again, for which he hired Lotte Cohn as an assistant in 1921. In 1922 he married his wife Bath-Sheva, with whom he had two daughters. In the course of his activity he traveled large parts of the Holy Land , loving the various landscapes for their beauty, to which he always felt obliged in his romantic inclination to scenic beauty when he intervened with his plans. Even after leaving the planning office in 1932, he remained connected to its work as an external member of their planning commissions.

Moschav Nahalal in the Jezreel plain , laid out according to Kauffmann's plans

His first task for the planning office was the planning of the moschav Ovdim Nahalal in the Jezreel plain in 1921. Kauffmann implemented the cooperative ideas of Elieser Joffes in his spatial design. His model of a round city crown on the Nahalal hill shows parallels to the ideas of Camillo Sitte and Bruno Taut . Kauffmann also drafted the plans for the construction of kibbutzim with different political orientations, whereby he planned the spatial separation of functions such as common eating of the kibbutznikim (dining room), living for adults and children (at that time mostly in the care of Metaplot in the children's house), administration, Provided workshops and stores as well as stables. Green spaces connected the usage zones into a unified whole. Kauffmann initiated and designed, mostly on his own, an architectural master plan for many new kibbutzim and moschavim in the Jezreel plain, best known are Ein Harod , Kfar Jehoschua , Degania Alef , Beth Sera (Beit Zera) , Kfar Jecheskel and even Nahalal.

His designs for rural settlements, to which he was particularly inclined, were individually tailored to the landscape and the requirements of the kibbutzim or moschavim and took into account local climatic conditions in order to ensure the best ventilation for residential houses and other buildings and to avoid nuisance from workshops or stables. Kauffmann built the school in Kibbutz Degania Alef in 1928 with a sloping double roof so that only the upper one would be heated by the sun, while the lower one above the utility rooms would always be in the shade and the air flow that formed between the roofs would create a cooling effect for the building below would. Overhanging roof elements prevent direct solar radiation into the rooms. In 1926 he built houses in Sodom for the workers of the Palestine Potash Company, who took into account the special conditions of this hot and below sea level area. The workers' houses have large covered balconies on the bedrooms to provide shade during the day, but also space to spend the night in the coolness of the night. The founder's house in Beth Sera (Beit Zera), built in 1927 according to plans by Kauffmann , together with two children's houses built two years later, formed the ensemble The Founder's Yard . This ensemble was recognized as a Historic Site by UNESCO and the Israeli Council for the Conservation of Historic Places a few years ago .

Beith Mahanaim in Rechavia (Jerusalem), 1931 by Kauffmann for Menachem Ussishkin built

Unlike his colleague Alex Baerwald , Kauffmann maintained a simple, modern style and rejected oriental elements such as arcades, arches and domes. Kauffmann also viewed playful building details - such as round bay windows - by his colleague Erich Mendelsohn , whom he knew from his student days, as unnecessary frills. The strict British building regulations Ronald Storrs ' of 1918, according to which all new buildings in Jerusalem had to be clad with facades made of rectangular chiseled natural stone ( Meleke ), Kauffmann felt as restrictive and knew it, for example. B. to bypass the house of Pomeranz in 1932. He had the facades clad in part with smooth natural stone, but left the columns and cornices in exposed concrete, which made the house stand out as a modern building . Kauffmann also designed plans for houses for many other private clients and participated in many tenders.

Beit Aghion in Rechavia (Jerusalem), built 1936–1938 by Kauffmann for Edward Aghion, since 1974 residence of the Israeli Prime Minister

In 1921 he took over the planning of a garden suburb for the first time, today's Jerusalem district of Talpioth . It led terraced streets around the Talpioth hill up to the hilltop, where Kauffmann planned public buildings for culture and education. The Palestine Land Development Co. had acquired a dune area on the Mediterranean from Messrs. Amin Nassif and Matari, north of Tel Aviv Allenby Street up to about today's Rechov Mapu and east about to today's Ben-Jehuda-Straße, and commissioned Kauffmann with the planning to take over. His plan from July 1921 was not adopted by Patrick Geddes in the Geddes plan drawn up from 1925 to 1929 for the expansion of Tel Aviv to the north. In 1927 the British Mandate Government appointed Kauffmann to the Palestinian City Planning Commission. He designed many pavilions for the Levante Masses (1932–1934) in Tel Aviv. Major architectural projects by Kauffmann included the campus of the Hebrew University on Mount Scopus , which he designed with Ossip Klarwein and Heinz Rau . The Ben Shemen children's and youth village was also built from 1927 according to his plans. In the limited competition for the construction of Beit Hadar in Tel Aviv, to which Kauffmann and three colleagues were invited, his former employee, the now independent architect Carl Rubin, made the race.

Kauffmann drafted the plans for various new or greatly expanded cities, e.g. B. Afula and Herzlia , as well as new quarters such as Talpioth, Rechavia (north), Beith HaKerem and Kirjat Mosche in Jerusalem and Hadar HaKarmel , Neweh Scha'anan , Bat Galim and Karmel Mitte in Haifa or the White City in Tel Aviv . American Zion Commonwealth Ltd. commissioned Kauffmann to create a development plan for Afula. Kauffmann took the central location of Afula on traffic routes and close to productive agriculture in the Jezreel plain as a starting point to develop it into a city as a location for central services for agriculture (agricultural machinery trade, mills, silos, agricultural processing). The plots of land marked out according to his plans were sold in 1925/1926 to well-meaning investors in North America, who mostly did not build or develop but only held the land - also because of the Great Depression. The State of Israel then expropriated the American owners of the vacant land after 1948 in order to develop them itself, but Afula did not turn out to be what Kauffmann had expected. The new peripheral location with cut off traffic routes, into which Afula had gotten due to the armistice line of 1948/1949, took away its geographical advantage and the rural settlements of the Jezreel plain had long since created their own facilities for the central services they needed.

The fifth Aliyah, promoted by Hitler's anti-Semitic policies, brought many new tasks for Kauffmann, but also appeals for help from uprooted people and immigrants who lacked the minimum wealth required by the mandate government. Kauffmann gave some of the missing money, which didn't mean much to them. In 1937, on his 50th birthday, he was honored with a big celebration. The Bezalel Arts and Crafts School honored him in 1947 with an exhibition on his works. He was given the honorary title "Builder of Israel". After the founding of Israel, young graduates of the Technion ousted Kauffmann and colleagues of the same age, so that he had few assignments in the last years of his life. He died in Jerusalem in 1958 after a serious illness. The local street Rechov haAdrichal (רחוב האדריכל; street of the architect) is dedicated to Kauffmann in the subtitle. His grave is on Har HaMenuchot in the west of Jerusalem.

Gallery of buildings by Kauffmann

Buildings of Kauffmann

Beit haSchimschoni, Jerusalem-Rechavia, 1931–32

Beit haShimshoni, balconies

Tower station , Sederoth Yeruschalayim, Tel Aviv-Jaffa, built in 1924, demolished in 2010

Aerial view of the Nahalal, which was laid out in a circle from 1921

Web links

Commons : Richard Kauffmann  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Esther Kauffmann Forsen (Ed.): Richard Kauffmann, Architect and Town Planner. A daughter's perspective on his life and work. (website)
• Ines Sonder, “How do you honor an architect? Richard Kauffmann's legacy - a chronology against oblivion ” ( Memento from December 7, 2007 in the Internet Archive ), in: Jüdische Zeitung , April 2006, accessed on December 3, 2012.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Elizabeth Zach: The Influence of Bauhaus on Architecture in Early Palestine and Israel. Special Report: Art in Perspective. In: The New York Times, March 15, 2012. ( online , accessed October 26, 2012)
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k l} Myra Warhaftig : You laid the foundation stone. Life and work of German-speaking Jewish architects in Palestine 1918-1948. Wasmuth, Tübingen / Berlin 1996, ISBN 3-8030-0171-4 , p. 42.
3. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z aa ab} Lotte Cohn: Richard Kauffmann, Architect and City Planner. [Richard Kauffmann: architect and urban planner (Ger.), Jerusalem: letter to Bath-Scheva Kauffmann, 1978; Engl.], Monika Iacovacci (ex.), In: Richard Kauffmann: Architect and Town Planner - Biography , accessed on October 28, 2012.
4. ↑ ^{a b c d} "Richard Kauffmann" , on: Art Encyclopedia, Grove Art ( Memento of the original from April 16, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed October 26, 2012. 
5. ↑ So the name in: Myra Warhaftig: They laid the foundation stone. Life and work of German-speaking Jewish architects in Palestine 1918-1948. Wasmuth, Berlin / Tübingen 1996, ISBN 3-8030-0171-4 , p. 42.
6. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h} Myra Warhaftig: You laid the foundation stone. Life and work of German-speaking Jewish architects in Palestine 1918-1948. Wasmuth, Tübingen / Berlin 1996, ISBN 3-8030-0171-4 , p. 43.
7. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i} Myra Warhaftig: You laid the foundation stone. Life and work of German-speaking Jewish architects in Palestine 1918-1948. Wasmuth, Berlin / Tübingen 1996, ISBN 3-8030-0171-4 , p. 43.
8. ^ Kibbutz Bet-Zera - Past and Future in the Founders House . A video (in English) can be called up via the page or directly, which provides very clear information about the Founder's Yard .
9. ↑ "Architect Richard Kauffmann / אדריכל ריכרד קאופמן" , on: Artlog , accessed on October 26, 2012.
10. ^ "The Orient Fair" , in: Artlog , accessed on October 26, 2012.
11. ↑ Nitza Metzger-Szmuk (נִיצָה מֶצְגֶּר-סְמוּק), Bauhaus Tel Aviv Site Plan / תֵּל־אָבִיב מַפַּת הָאֲתָרִים , Boʿaz Ben-Menasche (בֹּעַז בֶּן-מְנַשֶּׁה; Transl.), Tel Aviv-Jaffa:קֶרֶן תֵּל־אָבִיב לְפִתּוּחַ, 1994, section 2.
12. ^ Myra Warhaftig, you laid the foundation stone - life and work of German-speaking architects in Palestine 1918-1948 , Berlin: Wasmuth, 1996, p. 108. ISBN 978-3-8030-0171-9 .