Simon Ravenstein
Johann Andreas Simon Ravenstein (born July 28, 1844 in Frankfurt am Main ; † May 12, 1932 in Baden-Baden ) was a German gymnastics teacher , topographer , architect and building contractor .
Life
Simon Ravenstein was born in Frankfurt am Main as the son of the cartographer, publisher and gymnastics father Friedrich August Ravenstein . His brother Ludwig Ravenstein took over his father's card publisher , Simon became a gymnastics teacher at the municipal high school , but gave up the job when he discovered that he enjoyed drawing. As an autodidact, Ravenstein learned the trade of a topographer and architect and began working as a building contractor in 1874, partly due to family-owned properties, many of which he lived in and converted. Ravenstein formed himself on his study trips to Italy (1878), Greece (1880), Palestine and Egypt (1898) as well as France (1898), Spain (1900) and Norway (1904). The art of the Renaissance awakened in him the desire to include painters and sculptors in the architectural program. So Ravenstein became a patron and friend of Hans Thoma , Wilhelm Steinhausen and Wilhelm Trübner and obtained orders for them to paint the interior and exterior of the villas and commercial buildings he designed. Thomas and Steinhausen's first commission in 1879 was to paint a house on Reuterweg 60 in Frankfurt; The most important design of a Ravenstein house (Frankfurt, Gärtnerweg 10) was carried out in 1882 by Hans Thoma, for which he made five wall frescoes with scenes from Wagner's operas . Composers such as Engelbert Humperdinck , Hans Pfitzner , Felix Weingartner , the art historian Henry Thode and many others frequented this house
Ravenstein was born with Gertraude. Eiselborn (born June 10, 1847; † January 31, 1893) married; from this first marriage there were three children (1868–1871): Charlotte, Friedericke and August. Ravenstein met the soprano Cäcilie Mohor (1855–1928), who made her debut at the Frankfurt Opera without success, (again) became a student of Julius Stockhausen and from 1886 was successful as a Wagner interpreter at the opera houses in Mannheim, Leipzig, Hamburg, Cologne and Karlsruhe and Bayreuth until she gave up her career because of the relationship with Ravenstein, from which the children Ernst and Luise emerged (1891/1893) and a joint marriage. Ravenstein left Frankfurt with Mohor-Ravenstein in 1926 and moved to Baden-Baden , where his (second) wife died soon afterwards (April 26, 1928), and he lived there for another five years.
Works
In 1884, Ravenstein designed the Bavaria residential and commercial building for the Krause siblings in Mainz at the main traffic junction at Schillerplatz (today Hauptwache ) 8-10 / Schillerstraße 6-8. Ravenstein designed the building complex in the style of historicism with green sandstone and pillars made of Swedish granite. 16 artisans and visual artists contributed to the design. In the directory of Frankfurt buildings that Ravenstein designed or converted, the 68 entries include the residential and commercial buildings Zum Goetheeck and Zum Staufeneck (both 1900), the Sophienheim (1903/1905, an old people's home of the Gering Foundation ), the installation of the Lichtspieltheater Metro (1906) in the Hotel zum Schwan , Steinweg 12, where the Peace of Frankfurt was signed in 1871 - the cinema gave way to the new building of a large bookstore in 1987 - as well as the Ravenstein publishing house at Wielandstraße 31 (1881), the seat of the cartographic publishing house his father, after whom a street in Frankfurt's Ostend was named. On the Zeil 74-76 (corner Fahrgasse, near Konstablerwache) the house Zum Kaiser Karl (1882), popularly called "House Fratzeneck", was also painted by Thoma and decorated with mythical, plastic figures by Steinhausen. In Heidelberg in 1886 he headed the construction of the Schloßhotel Schweninger sanatorium , Wolfsbrunnenweg 1, in Idstein the construction of the mental hospital and in 1894/1895 the lung hospital in Ruppertshain .
Services
Ravenstein not only appeared as an architect of historicism in Frankfurt and a patron of the painters he was friends with, but also since 1890 as an architect and sponsor of the “AG for small apartments”, for which 1,600 apartments were built, and the “Asylum for the homeless” project. Only a few buildings survived the nights of bombing in March 1944 , one of them is the Steinhausen House , an example of the style that Ravenstein cultivated with his town villas.
literature
- Frankfurt historical figures. Wall painting on Bavaria Schillerplatz & Schillerstraße along with the paintings in the new restoration room. Merstatt, Schrod & Co., Frankfurt am Main 1884.
- A gym teacher was building in Frankfurt. The man who wanted to make the city more beautiful. o. O., o. D. (newspaper article, after 1945), Institute for Urban History Frankfurt am Main, call number V 33 - 103.
- Waldemar Kramer (Ed.): Frankfurt Chronicle. Frankfurt am Main 1977.
- Wolfgang Klötzer (Hrsg.): Frankfurter Biographie . Personal history lexicon . Second volume. M – Z (= publications of the Frankfurt Historical Commission . Volume XIX , no. 2 ). Waldemar Kramer, Frankfurt am Main 1996, ISBN 3-7829-0459-1 . P. 175 f.
- Monument Office of the City of Frankfurt am Main (Ed.), Thomas Zeller (Ed.): The architects and their building activities in Frankfurt am Main from 1870 to 1950. Frankfurt am Main 2004, ISBN 3-921606-51-9 , p 294 f.
Web links
- Institute for Urban History: Around the Hauptwache, views of a square, Frankfurt am Main 2004 (PDF file; 1.68 MB)
- To Cäcilie Mohor-Ravenstein
- To the Ludwig Ravenstein publishing house
Individual evidence
- ^ Zeller: Architects , p. 294.
- ↑ ( Page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. ].
- ^ Zeller: Architects . P. 294 f.
- ↑ Klötzer: Frankfurter Biographien. P. 175.
- ↑ The sanatorium attracted high-ranking celebrities; it became in the 1920s ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. and 2007/08 ( Memento of the original from March 25, 2009 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. rebuilt (the link gives a historical insight, but the date of construction follows Zeller: Architekten , p. 294).
- ↑ The so-called Old House ( Memento of the original from May 12, 2016 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. in the Kalmenhof facility
- ↑ Today's name: Zauberberg .
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Ravenstein, Simon |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Ravenstein, Johann Andreas Simon (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German architect |
| DATE OF BIRTH | July 28, 1844 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Frankfurt am Main |
| DATE OF DEATH | May 12, 1932 |
| Place of death | Baden-Baden |