Rolf Spörhase

Rolf Spörhase (born January 26, 1889 in Wiershausen , † May 4, 1982 in Hamburg ) was a German businessman and writer .

Life

Training and cooperation with Karl Schneider

The nearby Hann. Münden, born Spörhase, was the son of a miller who ran a water mill. Since his father died early, his uncle Karl Spörhase took him in at the age of eight. After attending school in Celle , he did a commercial apprenticeship with a transport company in Hamburg. He then worked for three years as a sales representative for the Chas company . A. Schieren Company . This American company manufactured drive belts and had its European branch in Hamburg. Spörhase traveled as a technical advisor through Germany, the Baltic States, the Ukraine, through large parts of Russia to the Caucasus and the Black Sea. Since he was very interested in the topic, he used the trips to inspect different architectural styles. During the First World War he fought as a soldier and was seriously injured three times. During the Second World War he described his memories of this time in a typescript from 1941. The war had changed his worldview and during this time he had come to the realization that man must “shape life on his own responsibility, with inner truthfulness”.

In addition to his work as a traveling salesman, Spörhase wrote about architecture as an autodidact. The writings aroused the interest of the architect Karl Schneider . Based on his recommendation, Spörhase switched to the Bau-Rundschau as a full-time employee in 1924 . From 1926 he worked there as editor. Spörhase tried his own reviews of North German architecture, but took existing sources into account. For issue 9 of the cultural magazine Der Kreis , he dealt with two country houses of his sponsor Schneider, which he described as “local art in the new sense” and which are important not because of their tradition, but because of the “contemporary artistic act” inherent in them. In 1928 he praised the Michaelsen house designed by Schneider, as it was important for current developments in Hamburg architecture.

In 1927 Karl Schneider Spörhase transferred the management of the Jarrestraße working group . As part of this construction work, both had two new, adjacent villas built in Bahrenfeld , in which they lived themselves. Spörhase's employment relationship with Schneider ended in 1930.

Work from 1930

Due to the global economic crisis and the sharp decline in construction activity, Spörhase now wrote more. Until 1932 he worked as editor of the Bau-Rundschau . In 1930 he gave the magazine Das Bild. Monthly issues for art and technology . His book Architecture as an Expression of Time never went to print. Spörhase wrote about housing cooperatives and building societies and temporarily took over the editing of the magazine Haus und Garten . He wrote further articles for the architecture magazine Stein - Holz - Eisen from Frankfurt am Main , for Saving and Building , Modern Building Forms , in 1929 for the Tonindustrie-Zeitung and Westermannsmonthshefte . During this time he also wrote his most important work on the Bau-Verein zu Hamburg , which is considered a standard work.

In the 1940s, Spörhase had great health and financial difficulties, due to which he could not accept several jobs in the housing industry. In 1941 his son Martin died shortly after starting his architecture studies in World War II . The death of his child triggered a great emotional crisis in Spörhase. After the end of the war, the housing specialist worked again as the editor of the Bau-Rundschau at least until 1949 . A special issue from 1947, which dealt with the reconstruction of Hamburg at a high level, received a lot of attention. Spörhase himself wrote an article for this in which he compared historical disasters in the Hanseatic city and the resulting consequences for social housing. He went into the Hamburg fire , the cholera epidemic of 1892 , the consequences of Operation Gomorrah and the famine prevailing at that time.

Since he was unemployed, Spörhase founded his own publishing house in 1951. He wrote a "magazine for architecture, urban development, housing", which he published under the title "Bauhefte". Due to financial problems, only two issues were published. Afterwards, the Spörhase, suffering from health problems, dealt with architecture in a different way: He conducted fundamental research on the history and topography of German cities and regions. Accompanied by his long-time employee Ingeborg Wulff and her husband Dietrich Wulff, who worked as a photographer and driver, he traveled through West Germany. In doing so, he developed the “Maps for the Development of the City. The development of the urban plan in the landscape ”, which experts use as sources to this day and which made Spörhase known. The Kohlhammer publishing house issued from 1968 to 1971 works at Osnabruck, Rottweil, Ellwangen, Karlsruhe, Bern and Paderborn. The last work in the series was the Ruhr area in 1840, 1930, 1970 .

In his later phase, Spörhase dealt with urban planning as a social work of art . In it, he extensively looked at different epochs in building history. This work is now in the Hamburg Architecture Archive .

literature

• Karin von Behr: Spörhase, Rolf . In: Franklin Kopitzsch, Dirk Brietzke (Hrsg.): Hamburgische Biographie . tape 5 . Wallstein, Göttingen 2010, ISBN 978-3-8353-0640-0 , p. 350-352 .