Rudolf Geil

This article refers to the architect Rudolf Geil. The politician of the same name can be found under Rudi Geil .

Rudolf Geil (born May 18, 1899 in Worms ; † May 11, 1962 in Darmstadt ; full name: Karl Hermann Rudolf Geil ) was a German architect and university professor .

Life

Karl Hermann Rudolf Geil was born in Worms in May 1899 as the son of the main teacher Heinrich Geil and his wife Alma Sudhaus. After graduating from high school, he studied architecture from 1917 and at the Technical University of Darmstadt . He graduated in May 1923 with the academic degree of a graduate engineer. Then he was assistant to Karl Roth at the architecture department of the Technical University of Darmstadt. As part of his legal clerkship , he worked at the State Building Authority Mainz, Worms District and the State Building Authority Dortmund. After passing the 2nd state examination , he was appointed government master builder ( assessor in the public building administration). From 1928 to 1940 he was the chief architect of the Hessische Heimstätte in Kassel.

On July 19, 1940 he became a full professor for building construction at the Technical University of Darmstadt. He thus succeeded Erich Mindner , who died in April 1939. The appointment committee put Geil, who joined the NSDAP on May 1, 1933 and who held the position of block leader from 1935 to 1937, on the first list because he was a graduate of the university. The justification of the commission read: "The idea of ​​maintaining a tradition lies in the guidelines of the Third Reich and also corresponds to the view of some other important universities".

During his time in Darmstadt, Rudolf Geil was also a member of the National Socialist German Lecturers' Association (NSDDB) from 1941 to 1944 and, along with Karl Lieser and Friedrich List, was one of the main pillars of the NS regime at the Darmstadt University and was a confidante of Gauleiter Jakob Sprenger . Geil was commissioned by the Reich Governor and Gauleiter Jakob Sprenger to plan for the reconstruction of the destroyed cities of Offenbach am Main and Neu-Isenburg . From 1944 until the university was closed by the US military authorities at the end of March 1945, he held the post of dean of the architecture department at the Technical University of Darmstadt. In contrast to its predecessor, Geil hardly created any noteworthy structures.

Rudolf Geil was dismissed from office in August 1945. In the public prosecutor's indictment in the denazification process, he was charged as an "incriminated person". In November 1947, in the first instance, the Spruchkammer only classified him as a “fellow traveler”. The Ministry of Political Liberation objected to this classification and requested a review of the procedure. After the Faculty of Architecture had appointed Theo Pabst from Munich to the Chair of Building Construction in November 1948 , and he took up the professorship in mid-1949, Geil could not return to his old position. There were no other free professorships in the architecture faculty either. To enable Geil to return to the university, he was given a teaching position for design issues in civil engineering in the Faculty of Civil Engineering in 1950 . In June 1954, at the suggestion of the Faculty of Architecture, he was to be appointed associate professor for “Technical Development” and “Building Materials Science”. However, this failed due to resistance from the Senate. Other initiatives by the faculty were not initially successful either. It was not until 1958 that Geil received an extraordinary professor for “technical construction and building materials”. This was converted into a full professorship on May 1, 1962.

Rudolf Geil died ten days after being appointed full professor at the age of 62. He was born in 1926 with Anne. Schumacher married. The family had lived in a house on Haubachweg since the early 1950s.

literature

• Melanie Hanel: Normality under exceptional conditions. The TH Darmstadt under National Socialism. Darmstadt 2014.
• Isabel Schmidt: The TH Darmstadt in the post-war period (1945–1960). Dissertation, Technical University Darmstadt, 2014.
• Christa Wolf and Marianne Viefhaus: Directory of professors at TH Darmstadt. Darmstadt 1977, p. 141.