Robert Liebenthal

Building of the State Archives Königsberg, designed by Robert Liebenthal

Robert Liebenthal (born September 26, 1884 in Tilsit ; † May 19, 1961 in Frankfurt am Main ) was a German architect and Prussian construction clerk .

Liebenthal, son of a lawyer, attended high school in Königsberg and Berlin . He then studied architecture and also art history at the Technical University of Berlin and the Technical University of Munich .

After passing the main diploma examination, he joined the state building administration of Prussia . His training as a government building manager ( trainee lawyer ) took place at the postal administration and at the building and finance department in Berlin. In 1912 he was appointed government builder ( Assessor ). In 1912 he won the Schinkel Prize in the structural engineering section with his design for a court and parish church with monastery buildings. In August 1913, he and Fritz Krischen won 3rd prize in the competition for the design of the town hall in Potsdam . After participating in the First World War from 1915 to 1918, he worked for the building and finance department in Berlin from 1919 to 1920, and in 1921 in the settlement and housing department of the Frankfurt / Oder district government . After being appointed government and building officer in 1921, he became head of the state building construction office in Goldap . 1922–1923 he worked in the construction department of the Prussian Ministry of Finance (including the design of a court building for Königsberg), and from 1923–1924 as a department head at the Potsdam district government .

From 1924 he was head of the new building department of the University of Königsberg , in this capacity he built the extension of the university (Liebenthal wing) between Paradeplatz and Tragheimer Gartenstraße until 1928 . For this he was made an honorary citizen of the university in 1928. From 1929 to 1930 he built the new state archive at Hansaring 31 in Königsberg. The building, built in the New Objectivity style, was the only new archive building designed during the Weimar Republic. From 1931 to 1945 he was the department head for housing and settlement construction at the provincial administration of East Prussia in Königsberg.

After escaping from Königsberg in January 1945, he lived in Überlingen for two years and was then head of the University of Frankfurt am Main's new building department from 1947 until his retirement in 1950 .

Publications

• Extension of the college building of the Albertus University in Königsberg i. Pr. In: Zentralblatt der Bauverwaltung 50th year 1930, pp. 297–301. ( Full text ).
• Prussian State Archives Königsberg i. Pr. In: Zentralblatt der Bauverwaltung 51st year 1931, pp. 313–318. ( Full text ).
• The reconstruction of the Senckenberg Anatomical Institute at the University of Frankfurt am Main. In: Die neue Stadt , born 1953, pp. 304–323.

literature

• Kurt Forstreuter : Buildings by Robert Liebenthal. A builder of the new Königsberg . In: Ostpreußenblatt 12, 22, 1961, p. 11.
• Kurt Forstreuter: Robert Liebenthal . In: Old Prussian biography. Volume 3, Marburg 1975, p. 1003.
• man: Reger builder. Memories of the architect Robert Liebenthal. In: Ostpreußenblatt 50, 38, 1999, p. 9 ( full text ).

Individual evidence

1. ^ Winner of the Schinkel Competition ( Memento from April 7, 2014 in the Internet Archive ).
2. ↑ Der Städtebau , 11, 1914, p. 14 f. [1] . 20 plate 16 [2] .
3. ↑ This wing was preserved after the war and forms the main building of today's University of Königsberg ( picture ).
4. ^ Katja Leiskau: Architecture and History of the State Archive Purpose Buildings in Germany 1871-1945. Dissertation, University of Marburg, 2008, pp. 71–73, pp. 157–158, p. 177. ( Full text ( memento of the original from April 7, 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 note. ). The building has been preserved to this day and is used as a district library.