Rudolf Kolbe

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Rudolf Kolbe (born December 2, 1873 in Waldheim , † May 9, 1947 in Dresden ; full name: Emil Rudolf Kolbe ) was a German architect and craftsman who worked mainly in Dresden and the surrounding region and, apart from several, received a lot of attention at the time Protestant churches primarily built bourgeois and upper-class houses.

family

Rudolf Kolbe was born in 1873 as the son of a master painter and upholsterer, who also worked as a landscape painter in his free time . The well-known sculptor Georg was one of Rudolf Kolbe's five siblings, all of whom also had artistic talent .

Rudolf Kolbe married Helene nee in 1900. Pahlitzsch (1875–1955). They had three children together, including the architect Joachim Kolbe (1904–1991), who worked in his father's office between 1932 and 1936.

A work monograph on Kolbe was published in 2010 by his granddaughter Andrea Büsing-Kolbe and her husband Hermann Büsing .

Apprenticeship and first years of employment

Rudolf Kolbe first attended the Bürgererschule (elementary school) in his hometown and from 1888 to 1893 the municipal trade school and the (state) building trade school in Dresden . He then found his first job in the renowned Dresden architecture firm Schilling & Graebner , where he stayed for two years. In 1895 he was accepted as a student at the Dresden Art Academy . There he completed his artistic training in Paul Wallot's master studio . From 1898 to 1901 Kolbe was employed by the Royal Saxon Court Building Office in Dresden. During this time he already took part in various architecture competitions and received a "Recognition Diploma" from the 1st German Building Exhibition in Dresden 1900 "for his outstanding artistic achievements" .

plant

After Rudolf Kolbe had pursued his first projects together with his friend, architect Oskar Menzel , outside of his work for the court building department around 1900 , he officially set up his own business in Dresden in 1901. In addition to a few bourgeois single-family houses in the Dresden suburb of Loschwitz , where he skilfully exploited the turbulent topography of the building site, various competition designs were also created that attracted attention. In 1906 he was awarded a travel grant from the city of Dresden from the funds of the Gottfried Semper Foundation , which he used for study trips to Italy and Egypt.

In 1906 at the latest, Kolbe was appointed a member of the Association of German Architects (BDA). In 1908 he and his friend and former office partner Oskar Menzel were accepted into the Dresden artists' association " Die Zunft ". In 1912 at the latest he also became a member of the German Werkbund . In the same year, Kolbe turned down an offer from Wilhelm Kreis to work as a teacher at the Düsseldorf School of Applied Arts, which had been headed by Kreis since 1908 , as he was firmly rooted in Dresden, both privately and professionally. During these years, after the first smaller sacred buildings, he also designed a larger church project for the Heilandskirche in Dresden-Cotta , which began in 1914 and was not completed until the 1920s .

While Kolbe could hardly acquire orders for municipal or state buildings, he built many bourgeois houses for wealthy clients and was also able to achieve success with designs for fountains, monuments and tombs. Because of these successes, he was released from military service in the First World War and worked in 1917/1918 as an artistic adviser to the III. Army and in the civil administration of the occupied French territories. He designed various military cemeteries in France and war honors in Saxony, which were realized in the early 1920s.

Grave of Rudolf Kolbe in the Loschwitz cemetery

After the First World War, Rudolf Kolbe also increasingly worked in the area of ​​housing and settlement construction - according to the circumstances of the time; the best-known example are the rows of houses built on the north, east and south sides of the market square in the garden city of Hellerau , based on a successful competition design between 1928 and 1930 .

From the mid-1930s, Rudolf Kolbe only received a few orders until the building materials were allocated in 1938, so that many buildings could not be carried out. Since he had a good reputation as a church architect, he was at least entrusted with renovations and refurbishments to church buildings all over Saxony, such as B. at Freiberg Cathedral , a total of 30 orders. After the end of the Second World War he was able to book his last successes, because when he took part in the competition for memorials for the mass graves in Zeithain near Riesa, he received the 1st prize and his design for a memorial for the air war victims at the Johannisfriedhof in Dresden-Tolkewitz was in the main moves executed.

Buildings and designs

Housing

"Villa Rosenhügel" in Dresden-Loschwitz, Sonnenleite 3

Between 1900 and 1936 37 single-family houses were built based on Kolbe's designs, mainly in Dresden-Loschwitz and Dresden-Wachwitz. The beginning of this group of works is marked by various residential buildings on Hermann-Vogel-Strasse in Loschwitz, which were built during the phase of Kolbe's collaboration with Oskar Menzel.

  • 1900–1901: own house in Dresden-Loschwitz, Hermann-Vogel-Straße 4 (under monument protection )
  • 1908–1909: "Villa Rosenhügel" in Dresden-Loschwitz, Sonnenleite 3 (under monument protection)
  • 1910–1911: "Landhaus Kruse" in Dresden-Weißer Hirsch, Collenbuschstraße 18 (under monument protection)
  • 1919–1928: Settlements for the savings and construction association in Radeberg , Schillerstraße, Lessingstraße (preserved with changes)
  • 1921–1922: Villa for the manufacturer Carl Schmieder in Dresden-Strehlen, Winterbergstrasse 2 (with gardens under monument protection)
  • 1928–1930: Market square development in the garden city of Hellerau (under monument protection)
  • 1936: Residence for Marie Countess von Schmettow in Dresden-Weißer Hirsch, Lahmannring 5b (under monument protection)

Protestant churches

Heilandskirche, Dresden
Hope Church, Dresden (view from Clara-Zetkin-Strasse)

Fountains, monuments, war honors, tombs

  • 1909: Ludowieg fountain in (Hamburg-) Harburg (Elbe) , in the city ​​park (as a memorial to the mayor Julius Ludowieg , who died in 1908 ; location until 1929 on Buxtehuder Straße)
  • 1913: Bismarck tower in Dresden-Cossebaude
  • 1913: Design for a jewelry square in Hartha as Wettin-Platz (today: Stadtpark)
  • 1916: Jakobsbrunnen in the cemetery in Waldheim (together with Georg Kolbe)
  • 1922: War honor in Demitz-Thumitz
  • 1946: Place of honor for air war victims at the Johannisfriedhof in Dresden-Tolkewitz

Fonts

  • Thoughts on the buildings of the Heilandskirche in Dresden-Cotta. In: Georg Laube: Memorandum for the consecration of the church and the church buildings of the Evangelical Lutheran. Heilandskirchgemeinde in the suburb of Dresden-Cotta on Ascension Day, May 26, 1927. Dr. Güntzsche Foundation, Dresden 1927.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Page on the Graupa Church ( memento of the original from September 9, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. at www.graupa-online.de , last accessed on April 4, 2012. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.graupa-online.de
personal data
SURNAME Kolbe, Rudolf
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kolbe, Emil Rudolf (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German architect and craftsman
DATE OF BIRTH December 2, 1873
PLACE OF BIRTH Waldheim
DATE OF DEATH May 9, 1947
Place of death Dresden